ons; and Dolly would
have been extremely happy; was happy; until on going in to dinner she
saw the wineglasses on the table, and bottles suspiciously cooling in
water. Her heart sank down, down. If she had had time and had dared,
she would have remonstrated; but yet what could she say? She knew, too,
that the wine at Mr. Thayer's table, like everything else on it, would
be of the best procurable; better and more alluring than her father
could get elsewhere. In her secret heart there was a bitter unspoken
cry of remonstrance. O friends! O friends!--she was ready to say,--do
you know what you are doing? You are dropping sweet poison into my
life; bitter poison; deadly poison, where you little think it; and you
do it with smiles and coloured glasses! She could hardly eat her
dinner. She saw with indescribable pain and a sort of powerless
despair, how Mr. Copley felt the license of his friend's house and
example, and how the delicacy of the vintages offered him acted to dull
his conscience; Mr. Thayer praising them and hospitably pressing his
guest to partake. He himself drank very moderately and in a kind of
mere matter-of-fact way; it was part of the dinner routine; and St.
Leger tasted, as a man who knows indeed what is good, but also makes it
a matter of no moment; no more than his bread or his napkin. Mr. Copley
drank with eager gusto, and glass after glass; even, Dolly thought, in
a kind of bravado. And this would go on every day while their visit
lasted; and perhaps not at dinner only; there were luncheons, and for
aught she knew, suppers. Dolly's heart was hot within her; so hot that
after dinner she could not keep herself from speaking on the subject to
Christina. Yet she must begin as far from her father as possible. The
two girls were sitting on the bank under a fig-tree, looking out on the
wonderful spectacle of the bay of Naples at evening.

"There is a matter I have been thinking a great deal about lately," she
said, with a little heartbeat at her daring.

"I daresay," laughed Christina. "That is quite in your way. Oh, I do
wish Sandie would come! He _ought_ to be here."

"This is no laughing matter, Christina. It is a serious question."

"You are never anything but serious, are you?" said her friend. "If you
have a fault, it is that, Dolly. You don't laugh enough."

Dolly was silent and swallowed her answer; for what did Christina know
about it? _She_ had not to watch over her father; her father watched