tirely in Jack Wentworth's keeping. He made a piteous
appeal to his patron as the great man turned to go away.

"I don't see what good it can do _you_ to rob a poor fellow!" cried
Wodehouse. "But look here, I aint going to turn against your advice.
I'll give it them, by Jove, for life--that is, for Mary's life," said
the munificent brother. "She's twenty years older than Lucy--"

"How do you dare to subject us to such insults?" cried the indignant
Lucy, whose little hand clenched involuntarily in her passion. She had
a great deal of self-control, but she was not quite equal to such an
emergency; and it was all she could do to keep from stamping her foot,
which was the only utterance of rage possible to a gentlewoman in her
position. "I would rather see my father's house desecrated by you
living in it," she cried, passionately, "than accept it as a gift from
your hands. Mary, we are not obliged to submit to this. Let us rather
go away at once. I will not remain in the same room with this man!"
cried Lucy. She was so overwhelmed with her unwonted passion that she
lost all command of the position, and even of herself, and was false
for the moment to all her sweet codes of womanly behaviour. "How dare
you, sir!" she cried in the sudden storm for which nobody was prepared.
"We will remove the things belonging to us, with which nobody has any
right to interfere, and we will leave immediately. Mary, come with me!"
When she had said this, Lucy swept out of the room, pale as a little
fury, and feeling in her heart a savage female inclination to strike
Jack Wentworth, who opened the door for her, with her little white
clenched hand. Too much excited to remark whether her sister had
followed her, Lucy ran up-stairs to her room, and there gave way to the
inevitable tears. Coming to herself after that was a terribly humbling
process to the little Anglican. She had never fallen into a "passion"
before that she knew of, certainly never since nursery times; and often
enough her severe serene girlhood had looked reproving and surprised
upon the tumults of Prickett's Lane, awing the belligerents into at
least temporary silence. Now poor Lucy sat and cried over her downfall;
she had forgotten herself; she had been conscious of an inclination to
stamp, to scold, even to strike, in the vehemence of her indignation;
and she was utterly overpowered by the thought of her guiltiness.
"The very first temptation!" she said to herself; and made te