beside him.

"Perhaps he was a shade more civil than usual," observed Marcus, dryly,
"but his manners certainly want mending. Could you not illuminate that
motto, Livy, 'Manners makyth man?' and we would frame it, and give it him
as a Christmas present." But Olivia could not be induced to see the
joke; Mr. Gaythorne was still an old dear, and the perfume of his flowers
was sweet to her.

Marcus would have wondered if he had intercepted one of the searching
glances that were reading him so acutely; those deep-set, melancholy eyes
could pierce like a gimlet; sometimes a vivid blue light seemed to dart
from them. "When master has one of his awful looks on, I dare not face
him," Phoebe would say, and Mrs. Crampton, conscious as she was of
rectitude and the claim of long and faithful service, felt there were
limitations to her intercourse with her master.

Once, and once only, had she ventured on a tabooed subject, and had
retired from the room with her comely face quite pale with fear.

"I thought he would have struck me," she said to her confidante, the
middle-aged housemaid, "or that he would have had a fit; I should have
one myself if I ever tried it on again; but I never will, Rebecca, I will
take my oath of that."

"Master has an awful temper when he is drove wrong," returned Rebecca,
primly; "I don't wonder at Mr. Alwyn myself. I don't hold with keeping
too tight a hand over a young man, it fairly throttles all the goodness
out of them. He was none so bad that he would not have done better, if
only he had had a word of encouragement instead of all those flouts and
jibes."

"Those are exactly my sentiments, Becky," returned Mrs. Crampton, wiping
her eyes with her snowy-frilled apron, "and having a boy of my own, bless
him, I am a pretty fair judge. Tom was a pickle before he went to sea,
but neither his poor father nor me ever cast it at him. He ran away and
took the Queen's shilling, though it nigh broke our hearts. Well, he is
a sergeant now, and Polly makes him a good wife, and all's well that ends
well. But I must be looking after master's supper," and Mrs. Crampton
bustled away to her duties.

Olivia took her flowers round to Aunt Madge as soon as her household
duties were done in the morning. Mrs. Broderick, who had had a sleepless
night of pain, looked more worn and languid than usual, but she
brightened up at the sight of the flowers, and poked her long nose into
the heart of a rose with an ai