'll
leave you with your true knight and get Madeline off as quickly as I
can. The carriage is here, I suppose, Bertie?"

"It has been here for the last hour."

"That's well. Good-bye, my dear. Of course you'll come in to tea. I
shall trust to you to bring her, Bertie, even by force if necessary."
And so saying, Charlotte ran off across the lawn, leaving her brother
alone with the widow.

As Miss Stanhope went off, Eleanor bethought herself that, as Mr.
Slope had taken his departure, there no longer existed any necessity
for separating Mr. Stanhope from his sister Madeline, who so much
needed his aid. It had been arranged that he should remain so as to
preoccupy Mr. Slope's place in the carriage, and act as a social
policeman to effect the exclusion of that disagreeable gentleman. But
Mr. Slope had effected his own exclusion, and there was no possible
reason now why Bertie should not go with his sister--at least Eleanor
saw none, and she said as much.

"Oh, let Charlotte have her own way," said he. "She has arranged it,
and there will be no end of confusion if we make another change.
Charlotte always arranges everything in our house and rules us like a
despot."

"But the signora?" said Eleanor.

"Oh, the signora can do very well without me. Indeed, she will have
to do without me," he added, thinking rather of his studies in Carrara
than of his Barchester hymeneals.

"Why, you are not going to leave us?" asked Eleanor.

It has been said that Bertie Stanhope was a man without principle. He
certainly was so. He had no power of using active mental exertion to
keep himself from doing evil. Evil had no ugliness in his eyes; virtue
no beauty. He was void of any of these feelings which actuate men to
do good. But he was perhaps equally void of those which actuate men to
do evil. He got into debt with utter recklessness, thinking nothing
as to whether the tradesmen would ever be paid or not. But he did not
invent active schemes of deceit for the sake of extracting the goods
of others. If a man gave him credit, that was the man's look-out;
Bertie Stanhope troubled himself nothing further. In borrowing money
he did the same; he gave people references to "his governor;" told
them that the "old chap" had a good income; and agreed to pay sixty
per cent for the accommodation. All this he did without a scruple of
conscience; but then he never contrived active villainy.

In this affair of his marriage it had been represented