al, but as he sat and
listened a slight frown came across his brow.

"He must marry money, doctor. Now we have, you see, with your
assistance, contrived to separate him from dear Mary--"

"With my assistance, Lady Arabella! I have given no assistance, nor
have I meddled in the matter; nor will I."

"Well, doctor, perhaps not meddled; but you agreed with me, you know,
that the two young people had been imprudent."

"I agreed to no such thing, Lady Arabella; never, never. I not only
never agreed that Mary had been imprudent, but I will not agree to it
now, and will not allow any one to assert it in my presence without
contradicting it:" and then the doctor worked away at the thigh-bones
in a manner that did rather alarm her ladyship.

"At any rate, you thought that the young people had better be kept
apart."

"No; neither did I think that: my niece, I felt sure, was safe from
danger. I knew that she would do nothing that would bring either her
or me to shame."

"Not to shame," said the lady, apologetically, as it were, using the
word perhaps not exactly in the doctor's sense.

"I felt no alarm for her," continued the doctor, "and desired no
change. Frank is your son, and it is for you to look to him. You
thought proper to do so by desiring Mary to absent herself from
Greshamsbury."

"Oh, no, no, no!" said Lady Arabella.

"But you did, Lady Arabella; and as Greshamsbury is your home,
neither I nor my niece had any ground of complaint. We acquiesced,
not without much suffering, but we did acquiesce; and you, I think,
can have no ground of complaint against us."

Lady Arabella had hardly expected that the doctor would reply to her
mild and conciliatory exordium with so much sternness. He had yielded
so easily to her on the former occasion. She did not comprehend that
when she uttered her sentence of exile against Mary, she had given
an order which she had the power of enforcing; but that obedience to
that order had now placed Mary altogether beyond her jurisdiction.
She was, therefore, a little surprised, and for a few moments
overawed by the doctor's manner; but she soon recovered herself,
remembering, doubtless, that fortune favours none but the brave.

"I make no complaint, Dr Thorne," she said, after assuming a tone
more befitting a de Courcy than that hitherto used, "I make no
complaint either as regards you or Mary."

"You are very kind, Lady Arabella."

"But I think that it is my duty to put a stop,