es at the thought, and
held up her head with a thrill of pride and satisfaction. Nobody could
blame her in that particular at least. "He knew he had only to tell me
what he wanted," said Miss Dora, swelling out her innocent plumes. Jack,
who was sitting opposite, and who had been listening with admiration,
thought it time to come in on his own part.

"I hope you don't mean to forsake _me_, aunt Dora," he said. "If a
poor fellow cannot have faith in his aunt, whom can he have faith in?
I thought it was too good to last," said the neglected prodigal. "You
have left the poor sheep in the wilderness and gone back to the
ninety-and-nine righteous men who need no repentance." He put up his
handkerchief to his eyes as he spoke, and so far forgot himself as to
look with laughter in his face at his brother Gerald. As for the
Squire, he was startled to hear his eldest son quoting Scripture, and
laid aside his paper once more to know what it meant.

"I am sure I beg your pardon, Jack," said aunt Dora, suddenly stopping
short, and feeling guilty. "I never meant to neglect you. Poor dear
boy, he never was properly tried with female society and the comforts
of home; but then you were dining out that night," said the simple
woman, eagerly. "I should have stayed with you, Jack, _of course_, had
you been at home."

From this little scene Miss Leonora turned away hastily, with an
exclamation of impatience. She made an abrupt end of her tea-making,
and went off to her little business-room with a grim smile upon her
iron-grey countenance. She too had been taken in a little by Jack's
pleasant farce of the Sinner Repentant; and it occurred to her to feel a
little ashamed of herself as she went up-stairs. After all, the
ninety-and-nine just men of Jack's irreverent quotation were worth
considering now and then; and Miss Leonora could not but think with a
little humiliation of the contrast between her nephew Frank and the
comfortable young Curate who was going to marry Julia Trench. He _was_
fat, it could not be denied; and she remembered his chubby looks, and
his sermons about self-denial and mortification of the flesh, much as a
pious Catholic might think of the Lenten oratory of a fat friar. But
then he was perfectly sound in his doctrines, and it was undeniable that
the people liked him, and that the appointment was one which even a
Scotch ecclesiastical community full of popular rights could scarcely
have objected to. According to her