and a couple more
plates.

"But she didn't put 'em next to hers," thought Daniel Barnett, most
unreasonably, for there was the whole opposite side of the table at
liberty, and she laid a place for him there.

It was of course what he had been looking for. He had come expecting to
be asked to stay, and as soon as they were all seated he told himself
that it was all right, and he stared hard at the gentle face across the
table and started various topics of conversation, directed at Mary, her
father good-humouredly helping him with a word now and then, while Mrs
Ellis looked on and attended to the wants of her guest.

"Yes, she's coming round at last," thought Daniel Barnett; for, whenever
she was addressed, Mary replied in a quiet, gentle way, and once entered
into the conversation with some word of animation, making the bailiff
look across the table at his wife, and give her a nod, as much as to
say--

"Now then, who's broken-hearted now?"

But Mrs Ellis only tightened her lips and said to herself--

"Yes, it's all very well; but fathers don't understand their girls like
mothers do. Women know how to read women and men don't, and never
will--that's my humble opinion about that--and I wish Daniel Barnett
would go--"

Daniel Barnett was a clever fellow, but like many sharp men he could be
too much so sometimes. Metaphorically, he was one of those men who
disdained the use of stirrups for mounting a horse, and liked to vault
into the saddle, which he could do with ease and grace, but sometimes he
would, in his efforts to show off, over-leap himself--vaulting ambition
fashion--and come down heavily on the other side.

He performed that feat on the present occasion at supper, for, in his
blundering way, now that circumstances had occurred which made him feel
pretty safe, he thought it would be good form to show Mary what a fine,
magnanimous side there was in his character, and how, far from looking
upon John Grange as a possible rival, he treated him as a poor,
unfortunate being, for whom he could feel nothing but pity.

"Rather strange business, wasn't it, about poor Grange, Mr Ellis, eh?"

Mary started. Mrs Ellis thrust her hand beneath the table-cloth to
give her daughter's dress a twitch, and Ellis frowned and uttered a kind
of grunt, which might have meant anything.

Any one else would have known by the silence that he had touched
dangerous ground. Daniel Barnett felt that it was an opportunity for
hi