pologies that it doesn't want! Two years! Patience! It
will be very good for Robin, and four-and-twenty is quite soon enough to
bite off one's wings, and found an ant-hill. As to being bullied into
being kissed, pitied, pardoned, and trained by Honor, I'll never sink so
low! No, at _no_ price.'

Poor Mr. Prendergast! Did ever a more innocent mischief-maker exist?

Poor Honora! Little did she guess that the letter written in such love,
such sympathy, such longing hope, would only excite fierce rebellion.

Yet it was at the words of Moses that the king's heart was hardened; and
what was the end? He was taken at his word. 'Thou shalt see my face no
more.'

To be asked to join the party on their tour had become Lucilla's prime
desire, if only that she might not feel neglected, or driven back to
Hiltonbury by absolute necessity; and when the husband and wife came
down, the wish was uppermost in her mind.

Eloisa remarked on her quiet style of dress, and observed that it would
be quite the thing in Paris, where people were so much less _outre_ than
here.

'I have nothing to do with Paris.'

'Oh! surely you go with us!' said Eloisa; 'I like to take you out,
because you are in so different a style of beauty, and you talk and save
one trouble! Will not she go, Charles?'

'You see, Lolly wants you for effect!' he said, sneeringly. 'But you are
always welcome, Cilly; we are woefully slow when you ain't there to keep
us going, and I should like to show you a thing or two. I only did not
ask you, because I thought you had not hit it off with Rashe, or have you
made it up?'

'Oh! Rashe and I understand each other,' said Cilly, secure that though
she would never treat Rashe with her former confidence, yet as long as
they travelled _en grand seigneur_, there was no fear of collisions of
temper.

'Rashe is a good creature,' said Lolly, 'but she is so fast and so
eccentric that I like to have you, Cilly; you look so much younger, and
more ladylike.'

'One thing more,' said Charles, in his character of head of the family;
'shouldn't you look up Miss Charlecote, Cilly? There's Owen straining
the leash pretty hard, and you must look about you, that she does not
take up with these new pets of hers and cheat you.'

'The Fulmorts? Stuff! They have more already than they know what to do
with.'

'The very reason she will leave them the more. I declare, Cilly,' he
added, half in jest, half in earnest, 'the only se