y.'

'And I have to leave her altogether to dear excellent Miss Nugent. It
seems very, very wrong, but I cannot help it! And how about Mark and
Annaple?'

'I think she is the bravest woman I ever met.'

'Then things are really going badly with the dear old firm?'

'I am hoping to talk to Mr. Egremont about it.'

'Ah!'

Nuttie paused. Towards Mr. Dutton she always had a stronger impulse of
confidence than towards any one else she had ever met; but she felt
that he might think it unbecoming to say that she had perceived a
certain dislike on her father's part towards Mark ever since the
rejection of the agency and the marriage, which perhaps was regarded as
a rejection of herself. He had a habit of dependence on Mark, which
resulted in personal liking, when in actual contact, but in absence the
distaste and offence always revived, fostered, no doubt, by Gregorio;
and Canon Egremont's death had broken the link which had brought them
together. However, for his brother's sake, and for the sake of the
name, the head of the family might be willing to do something. It was
one of Nuttie's difficulties that she never could calculate on the way
her father would take any matter. Whether for better or for worse, he
always seemed to decide in diametrical opposition to her expectation.
And, as she was certainly less impetuous and more dutiful, she parted
with Mr. Dutton at her own door without any such hint.

These three years had been discipline such as the tenderest, wisest
hand could not have given her, though it had been insensible. She had
been obliged to attend to her father and watch over her little brother,
and though neither task had seemed congenial to her disposition, the
honest endeavour to do them rightly had produced the affection born of
solicitude towards her father, and the strong warm tenderness of the
true mother-sister towards little Alwyn.

Ursula Egremont was one of those natures to which responsibility is the
best training. If she had had any one to guard or restrain her, she
might have gone to the utmost limits before she yielded to the curb.
As it was, she had to take care of herself, to bear and forbear with
her father, to walk warily with her household, and to be very guarded
with the society into which she was thrown from time to time. It was
no sudden change, but one brought about by experience. An outbreak of
impatience or temper towards her father was sure to be followed by his
galling