y for you. Ought you
not to try hard to conquer his distaste?'

'I--why, he cares for nothing good!'

'Nay,' smiling. 'Not for your mother?'

'Oh! She's pretty, you know; besides, she makes herself a regular
slave to him, and truckles to him in everything, as I could never do.'

'Perhaps she is overcoming evil with good.'

'I am afraid it is more like being overcome of evil. No, no, dear Miss
Mary, don't be shocked. The dear little mother never would be anything
but good in her own sweet self, but it is her nature not to stand up
for anything, you know. She seems to me just like a Christian woman
that has been obliged to marry some Paynim knight. And it perfectly
provokes me to see her quite gratified at his notice, and ready to
sacrifice anything to him, now I know how he treated her. If I had
been in her place, I wouldn't have gone back to him; no, not if he had
been ready to crown me after I was dead, like Ines de Castro.'

'I don't know that you would have had much choice in that case.'

'My very ghost would have rebelled,' said Nuttie, laughing a little.

And Mary could believe that Mrs. Egremont, with all her love for her
daughter, might find it a relief not to have to keep the peace between
the father and child. 'Yet,' she said to herself, 'if Mr. Dutton were
here, he would have taken her back the first day.'

CHAPTER XXII.

DISENCHANTMENT.

'He promised to buy me a bunch of blue ribbons.'

St. Ambrose's road was perfectly delightful as long as there was any
expectation of a speedy recall. Every day was precious; every meeting
with an old face was joyful; each interchange of words with Mr. Spyers
or Gerard Godfrey was hailed as a boon; nothing was regretted but the
absence of Monsieur and his master, and that the favourite choir boy's
voice was cracked.

But when there was reason to think that success had been complete, when
Miss Headworth had been persuaded by Mary that it was wiser on all
accounts not to mortify Alice by refusing the two guineas a week
offered for Miss Egremont's expenses; when a couple of boxes of clothes
and books had arrived, and Ursula found herself settled at
Micklethwayte till after Christmas, she began first to admit to herself
that somehow the place was not all that it had once been to her.

Her mother was absent, that was one thing. Mrs. Nugent was gone, that
was another. There was no Monsieur or Mr. Dutton to keep her in awe of
his precision, even