right, after all," said Merthyr, smiling.

Georgiana knew what he meant, and looked at him fondly.

"But I have never bound you to an oath," he resumed, in the same tone.

"I dare say you consider me a little different from most," said
Georgiana. She had as small reserve with her brother as vanity,
and could even tell him what she thought of her own worth without
depreciating it after the fashion of chartered hypocrites.

Mr. Powys wrote to Marini to procure him an interview with Belloni
as early as possible, and then he and Georgiana went down to Lady
Charlotte.

Letters from Adela kept the Brookfield public informed of the doings
on board the yacht. Before leaving home, Wilfrid with Arabella's
concurrence certainly--at her instigation, as he thought--had led
his father to imagine, on tolerably good grounds, that Mrs. Chump had
quitted Brookfield to make purchases for her excursion on lively waters,
and was then awaiting him at the appointed station. One of the old man's
intermittent nervous fits had frightened them into the quasi-fabrication
of this little innocent tale. The doctor's words were that Mr. Pole
was to be crossed in nothing--"Not even if it should appear to be of
imminent necessity that I should see him, and he refuses." The man
of science stated that the malady originated in some long continued
pressure of secret apprehension. Both Wilfrid and Arabella conceived
that persuasion alone was wanted to send Mrs. Chump flying to the yacht;
so they had less compunction in saying, "She is there."

And here began a terrible trial for the children of Nine Shades. To save
a father they had to lie grievously--to continue the lie from day to
day--to turn it from a lie extensive and inappreciable to the lie minute
and absolute. Then, to get a particle of truth out of this monstrous
lie, they had to petition in utter humiliation the woman they had
scorned, that she would return among them and consider their house
her own. No answer came from Mrs. Chump; and as each day passed, the
querulous invalid, still painfully acting the man in health, had to
be fed with fresh lies; until at last, writing of one of the scenes in
Brookfield, Arabella put down the word in all its unblessed aboriginal
bluntness, and did not ask herself whether she shrank from it. "Lies!"
she wrote. "What has happened to Bella?" thought Adela, in pure wonder.
Salt-air and dazzling society kept all idea of penance from this
vivacious young perso