some discretion, somebody she would not
dare to snap at. Her expressions are so reckless, that a young man would
not suit her. She ought to have some one to look up to; and you know how
she raves about fame, and celebrity, and that. She really seems to care
for very little else."

"Then she ought to have fallen in love with Robin Lyth, the most famous
man in all this neighborhood."

"Dr. Upround, you say things on purpose to provoke me when my remarks
are unanswerable. Robin Lyth indeed! A sailor, a smuggler, a common
working-man! And under that terrible accusation!"

"An objectionable party altogether; not even desirable as a grandson.
Therefore say nothing more of Janetta and Sir Duncan."

"Sometimes, my dear, the chief object of your existence seems to be to
irritate me. What can poor Robin have to do with Sir Duncan Yordas?"

"Simply this. He is his only son. The proofs were completed, and
deposited with me for safe custody, last night, by that very active man
of business, Geoffrey Mordacks, of York city."

"Well!" cried Mrs. Upround, with both hands lifted, and a high color
flowing into her unwrinkled cheeks; "from this day forth I shall never
have any confidence in you again. How long--if I may dare to put any
sort of question--have you been getting into all this very secret
knowledge? And why have I never heard a word of it till now? And not
even now, I do believe, through any proper urgency of conscience on your
part, but only because I insisted upon knowing. Oh, Dr. Upround, for
shame! for shame!"

"My dear, you have no one but yourself to blame," her husband replied,
with a sweet and placid smile. "Three times I have told you things that
were to go no further, and all three of them went twenty miles within
three days. I do not complain of it; far less of you. You may have felt
it quite as much your duty to spread knowledge as I felt it mine to
restrict it. And I never should have let you get all this out of me now,
if it had been at all incumbent upon me to keep it quiet."

"That means that I have never got it out of you at all. I have taken all
this trouble for nothing."

"No, my dear, not at all. You have worked well, and have promised not
to say a word about it. You might not have known it for a week at least,
except for my confidence in you."

"Much of it I thank you for. But don't be cross, my dear, because you
have behaved so atrociously. You have not answered half of my questions
yet."

"W