avage!'

'Where is your father?' said Percy.

'With John. That was where I heard it.' Then, as Percy was leaving the
room, 'Well, you are a bold man! I hope you mean to kill the cat on the
wedding-day. That is all.'

'I am obliged for your experience,' said Percy.

'If you make her like this one by the end of a year--'

'O, hush, Arthur!'

Percy hastened from the room. Violet could not recover from her
astonishment. 'Could Lord Martindale actually have consented?'

'Makes no difficulty at all. He has grown wiser since poor John's time.
I have taught him one may be trusted to choose for oneself.'

'But your aunt?'

'Ah! there is nothing she hates like a Fotheringham; but she has not the
power over my father she once had. She will have to take up with us for
very spite. But what they are to live on I do not know, unless my father
keeps them.'

'I thought he was heir to a baronetcy.'

'Yes; but there is a half-witted son of old Sir Antony in the way, who
will keep Percy out of the property for the term of his natural life, as
well as if he was a wise man.'

After luncheon, Violet had a message from John to ask for a visit from
her. She found him on the sofa in the sitting-room, apparently oppressed
and uncomfortable; but he looked brightened by her entrance, and pleased
when she offered to stay and read to him.

'The very thing I have been figuring to myself as most agreeable. I
don't want to talk or think. I have been overdoing both.'

So she had to repress her curiosity, and give him the repose of her
pleasant reading, till he dropped asleep; and after waiting some time,
in the fear of awakening him, she gently left the room, and had time for
another visit to the lodge, where she fell in with the lovers, and found
them disputing about the cotton umbrella. Percy announced that he should
give his own in exchange, and retain it for ever, as a trophy of what
could be accomplished with both horse and woman. Theodora was a little
cross. If he wished to keep it out of sentiment, that was all very well;
but to give it the turn of glorying over her was displeasing. He wanted
to make her confess that she had submitted to its shelter.

'No, you only walked by me, and held it up.'

'I appeal to you, Mrs. Martindale. Is not that the popular view of being
under an umbrella?'

Theodora would not speak, and Violet thought him wrong in teasing her.
Silence ensued, but ended in his saying, as they came to the steps,