for your own flesh and blood!'
exclaimed her mother.

'Well, and haven't they done a sight deal more for her?' said Herbert.

'You turning on me too, you ungrateful boy!' cried Mrs. Morton.

Herbert laughed.

'If it comes to gratitude,' he said, and looked significantly at the
decorations.

'And what is it but the due to his brother's widow?' said Mrs. Morton.
'Just a pittance, and you may depend that will be cut down on some
pretext now!'

'I should think so, if they heard Ida's tongue!' said Herbert.

'And Constance there is spitefulness enough to go and tell
them--favourite as she is!' said Ida.

'I should think not!' said Constance indignantly. 'As if I would do such
a mean thing!'

'Come, come, Ida,' said her mother, 'your sister knows better than that.
It's not the way when she is only just come home, so grown too and
improved, "quite the lady."'

Mrs. Morton had a mother's heart for Constance, though only in the third
degree, and was really gratified to see her progress. She had turned up
her pretty brown hair, and the last year had made her much less of a
child in appearance; her features were of delicate mould, she had dark
eyes, and a sweet mouth, with a rose-blush complexion, and was pleasing
to look on, though, in her mother's eyes, no rival to the thin, rather
sharply-defined features, bright eyes, and pink-and-white complexion that
made Ida the belle of a certain set at Westhaven. The party were more
amicable over the dinner-table--for dinner it was called, as an assertion
of gentility.

'Are you allowed to dine late,' asked Ida patronisingly of her sister,
'when you are not at school?

'Lady Adela dines early,' said Constance.

'Oh, for your sake, I suppose?'

'Always, I believe,' said Constance.

'Yes, always,' said Herbert. 'Fine people needn't ask what's genteel,
you see, Ida.'

That was almost the only breeze, and after dinner Herbert rushed out for
a smell of sea, interspersed with pipe, and to 'look up the inevitable
old Jack.'

Constance was then subjected to a cross-examination on all the
circumstances of the detention at Ratzes, and all she had heard or ought
to have heard about the arrival of the unwelcome little Michael, while
her mother and sister drew their own inferences.

'Really,' said Ida at last, 'it is just like a thing in a book.'

Constance was surprised.

'Because it was such a happy surprise for them,' she added hastily.

'No, nonsense, child, but it