tor.

The next morning Reynard waited at the Court till he had learnt from the
medical man that Betty's attack promised to be a very light one--or, as
it was expressed, 'very fine'; and in taking his leave sent up a note to
her:

'Now I must be Gone. I promised your Mother I would not see You yet, and
she may be anger'd if she finds me here. Promise to see me as Soon as
you are well?'

He was of all men then living one of the best able to cope with such an
untimely situation as this. A contriving, sagacious, gentle-mannered
man, a philosopher who saw that the only constant attribute of life is
change, he held that, as long as she lives, there is nothing finite in
the most impassioned attitude a woman may take up. In twelve months his
girl-wife's recent infatuation might be as distasteful to her mind as it
was now to his own. In a few years her very flesh would change--so said
the scientific;--her spirit, so much more ephemeral, was capable of
changing in one. Betty was his, and it became a mere question of means
how to effect that change.

During the day Mrs. Dornell, having closed her husband's eyes, returned
to the Court. She was truly relieved to find Betty there, even though on
a bed of sickness. The disease ran its course, and in due time Betty
became convalescent, without having suffered deeply for her rashness, one
little speck beneath her ear, and one beneath her chin, being all the
marks she retained.

The Squire's body was not brought back to King's-Hintock. Where he was
born, and where he had lived before wedding his Sue, there he had wished
to be buried. No sooner had she lost him than Mrs. Dornell, like certain
other wives, though she had never shown any great affection for him while
he lived, awoke suddenly to his many virtues, and zealously embraced his
opinion about delaying Betty's union with her husband, which she had
formerly combated strenuously. 'Poor man! how right he was, and how
wrong was I!' Eighteen was certainly the lowest age at which Mr. Reynard
should claim her child--nay, it was too low! Far too low!

So desirous was she of honouring her lamented husband's sentiments in
this respect, that she wrote to her son-in-law suggesting that, partly on
account of Betty's sorrow for her father's loss, and out of consideration
for his known wishes for delay, Betty should not be taken from her till
her nineteenth birthday.

However much or little Stephen Reynard might have been to