good
for her as to let Alwyn find her indispensable to his comfort, even
beyond Gregorio.

This absorption of her mother fell hard on Ursula, especially when the
first two days' alarm was over, and her mother was still kept an entire
prisoner, as companion rather than nurse. As before, the rheumatic
attack fastened upon the head and eyes, causing lengthened suffering,
and teaching Mr. Egremont that he had never had so gentle, so skilful,
so loving, or altogether so pleasant a slave as his wife, the only
person except Gregorio whom, in his irritable state, he would tolerate
about him.

His brother could not be entirely kept out, but was never made welcome,
more especially when he took upon himself to remonstrate on Alice's
being deprived of air, exercise, and rest. He got no thanks; Mr.
Egremont snarled, and Alice protested that she was never tired, and
needed nothing. The Rectory party were, excepting the schoolroom
girls, engaged to make visits from home before going into residence at
Redcastle, and were to begin with Monks Horton. They offered to escort
Ursula to see her great aunt at Micklethwayte--Oh joy of joys!--but
when the Canon made the proposition in his brother's room, Mr. Egremont
cut it short with 'I'm not going to have her running after those
umbrella-mongers.'

The Canon's heart sank within him at the tone, and he was really very
sorry for his niece, who was likely to have a fortnight or three weeks
of comparative solitude before her father was ready to set out on the
journey.

'Can't she help you, in reading to her father--or anything?' he asked
Alice, who had come out with him into the anteroom to express her warm
thanks for the kind proposal.

She shook her head. 'He would not like it, nor I, for her.'

'I should think not!' exclaimed the Canon, as his eye fell on the title
of a yellow French book on the table. 'I have heard of this! Does he
make you read such as this to him, Alice?'

'Nothing else seems to amuse him,' she said. 'Do you, think I ought
not? I don't understand much of that kind of modern French, but Nuttie
knows it better.'

'Not _that kind_, I hope,' said the Canon hastily. No, no, my dear,'
as he saw her colour mantling, 'small blame to you. You have only to
do the best you can with him, poor fellow! Then we'll take anything
for you. We've said nothing to Nuttie, Jane said I had better ask you
first.'

'Oh, that was kind! I am glad she is spared the disappoin