not nearly ready.'

'What can you have been doing then?' he exclaimed, with something of his
old temper.

'This house has been in such a state.'

'Well, you were not wanted to nurse the sick man, were you? I thought
you were one that was to be trusted. What more is there to do?'

Phoebe looked at her list of commissions, and found herself convicted.
Those patterns ought to have been sent back two days since. What had she
been about? Listening to Mr. Randolf's explanations of the _Hiawatha_
scenery! Why had she not written a note about that hideous hearth-rug?
Because Mr. Randolf was looking over Stowe's _Survey of London_.
Methodical Phoebe felt herself in disgrace, and yet, somehow, she could
not be sorry enough; she wanted a reprieve from exile at Hiltonbury,
alone and away from all that was going on. At least she should hear
whether _Macbeth_, at the Princess's Theatre, fulfilled Mr. Randolf's
conceptions of it; and if Mr. Currie approved his grand map of the
Newcastle district, with the little trees that she had taught him to
draw.

Perhaps it was the first time that Mervyn had been justly angry with her;
but he was so much less savage than in his injustice that she was very
much ashamed and touched; and finally, deeply grateful for the grace of
this one day in which to repair her negligence, provided she would be
ready to start by seven o'clock next morning. Hard and diligently she
worked, and very late she came home. As she was on her way up-stairs she
met Robert coming out of Owen's room.

'Phoebe,' he said, turning with her into her room, 'what is the matter
with Lucy?'

'The matter?'

'Do you mean that you have not observed how ill she is looking?'

'No; nothing particular.'

'Phoebe, I cannot imagine what you have been thinking about. I thought
you would have saved her, and helped Miss Charlecote, and you absolutely
never noticed her looks!'

'I am very sorry. I have been so much engaged.'

'Absorbed, you should call it! Who would have thought you would be so
heedless of her?'

He was gone. 'Still crazy about Lucy,' was Phoebe's first thought; her
second, 'Another brother finding me heedless and selfish! What can be
the matter with me?' And when she looked at Lucilla with observant eyes,
she did indeed recognize the justice of Robert's anxiety and amazement.
The brilliant prettiness had faded away as if under a blight, the eyes
were sinking into purple hollows, the attitude was