d from her waist as she advanced in a vaulted
hall of pale blue architecture, slender fluted columns, and pointed
arches. He sipped his lemonade, enjoying his soft, changing, and
vague dream. But now he heard voices in the next room, and listening
attentively he could distinguish the conversation.

"The drivelling idiot!" he thought. "So he's gone and married
her--that slut of a barmaid! Mount Rorke will never forgive him. I
wouldn't be surprised if he married again. The idiot!"

The reprobate father declared he had not hoped to see such a day, so
let bygones be bygones, that was his feeling. She had always been a
good daughter; they had had differences of opinion, but let bygones
be bygones. He had lived to see his daughter married to a gentleman,
if ever there was one; and his only desire was that God might spare
him to see her Lady Mount Rorke. Why should she not be Lady Mount
Rorke? She was as pretty a girl as there was in London, and a good
girl too; and now that she was married to a gentleman, he hoped they
would both remember to let bygones be bygones.

"Great Scott!" thought Mike; "and he'll have to live with her for the
next thirty years, watching her growing fat, old, and foolish. And
that father!--won't he give trouble! What a pig-sty the fellow has
made of his life!"

Lizzie asked her father not to cry. Then came a slight altercation
between Lizzie and her husband, in which it was passionately debated
whether Harry, the brother, was fitted to succeed Mike on the paper.

"How the fellow has done for himself! A nice sort of paper they'll
bring out."

A cloud passed over Mike's face when he thought it would probably be
this young gentleman who would continue his articles--_Lions of the
Season_.

"You have quarrelled with Mike," said Lizzie, "and you say you aren't
going to make it up again. You'll want some one, and Harry writes
very nicely indeed. When he was at school his master always praised
his writing. When he is in love he writes off page after page. I
should like you to see the letters he wrote to ..."

"Now, Liz, I really--I wish you wouldn't ..."

"I am sure he would soon get into it."

"Quite so, quite so; I hope he will; I'm sure Harry will get into
it--and the way to get into it is for him to send me some paragraphs.
I will look over his 'copy,' making the alterations I think
necessary. But for the moment, until he has learned the trick of
writing paragraphs, he would be of no use to m