o give it to?" and she
looked half comical, half saucy.

"If she were going to throw it into the sea, I don't see what difference
that would make."

"Ah! you are far too much interested. Nothing belonging to her can bear
a vulgar price."

"Nothing belonging to me is to gain profit by her self-denial," said
Alick, gravely. "You cannot do less than give her what she gave for it,
if you enter on the transaction at all."

"You mean that it would look shabby. You see we womankind never quite
know the code of the world on such matters," she said, candidly.

"There is something that makes codes unnecessary, Bessie," he said.

"Ah! I can make allowances. It is a cruel stroke. I don't wonder you
can't bear to see any one else on her palfrey; above all as a sacrifice
to the landscape painter."

"Then spare my feelings, and send the mare to Bishopsworthy," said
Alick, as usual too careless of the imputation to take the trouble to
rebut it or to be disconcerted.

Bessie was much tickled at his acceptance, and laughed heartily.

"To be sure," she said, "it is past concealment now. You must have been
very far gone, indeed, to have been taken in to suppose me to be making
capital of her 'charitable purposes.'"

"Your acting is too like life," he said, not yet induced to laugh, and
she rattled on with her droll, sham sentimental air. "Is it the long
words, Alick, or is it 'the great eyes, my dear;' or is it--oh, yes, I
know what is the great attraction--that the Homestead doesn't possess a
single spot where one could play at croquet!"

"Quite irresistible!" replied Alick, and Bessie retreated from the
colloquy still not laughing at but with him; that is, if the odd,
quaint, inward mirth which only visibly lengthened his sleepy eyes,
could be called a laugh.

Next time Captain Keith rode to Avonmouth he met the riding party on the
road, Bessie upon Rachel's mare, and it appeared that Lady Temple had
considered it so dreadful that Meg should not share her hospitality,
that it had been quite impossible to send her away. "So, Alick, your
feelings must endure the dreadful spectacle."

Meanwhile Rachel was hard at work with the subscribers to the "Christian
Knowledge Society." Beginning with the A's, and working down a page a
day, she sent every member a statement of the wrongs of the lacemakers,
and the plans of the industrial establishment, at a vast expense of
stamps; but then, as she calculated, one pound thus gained paid