ded the feelings of one he loves, it is not infrequently his
instinct to go on and wound them again.

"We have enough of that sort of language from the servants and the
stable-boys. Be good enough in future to use your mother-tongue."

Standing where his words had stopped her, a few yards away, she looked
up at him with the clear gaze of astonishment; but the slight shrug of
the shoulders before she spoke was also a trick caught from Diane, and
not calculated to allay his annoyance.

"Very well, father," she answered, with a quietness indicating judgment
held in reserve, "I won't do it again. I only meant to ask you if you
want me for anything in particular to-day; otherwise I shall go over and
lunch at the Thoroughgoods'."

"The Thoroughgoods' again? Can't you get through a day without going
there?"

"I suppose I could if it was necessary; but it isn't."

"I think it is. You'll do well not to wear out your welcome anywhere."

"I'm not afraid of that."

"Then I am; so you'd better stay at home."

He wheeled from her as sharply as he had turned to confront her,
striding off toward a wild border, where he tried to conceal the extent
to which he was ashamed of his ill temper by pretending to be engrossed
in the efforts of a bee to work its way into a blue cowl of monk's-hood.
When he looked around again she was still standing where he had left
her, her eyes clouded by an expression of wondering pain that smote him
to the heart.

Had he possessed sufficient mastery of himself he would have gone back
and begged her pardon, and sent her away to enjoy herself. It was what
he wanted to do; but the tension of his nerves seemed to get relief from
the innocent thing's suffering. The very fact that her pretty little
face was set with his own obstinacy of self-will, while behind it her
spirit was rising against this capricious tyranny, goaded him into
persistence. He remembered how often Diane had told him that Dorothea
could be neither led nor driven; she could only be "managed"; but he
would show Diane, he would show himself, that she could be both driven
and led, and that "management" should go the way of the wall-fruit and
the roses.

As, recrossing the lawn, he made as though he would pass her without
further words, he was an excellent illustration of the degree to which
the adult man of the world, capable of taking an important part among
his fellow-men, can be, at times, nothing but an overgrown infant. It
was n