curity for you and Owen
is in a double marriage. Perhaps she projects it. You fire up as if she
had!'

'If she had, do you think that I should go back?' said Cilly, trying to
answer lightly, though her cheeks were in a flame. 'No, no, I am not
going to let slip a chance of Paris.'

She stopped short, dismayed at having committed herself, and Horatia
coming down, was told by acclamation that Cilly was going.

'Of course she is,' said forgiving and forgetting Rashe. 'Little Cilly
left behind, to serve for food to the Rouge Dragon? No, no! I should
have no fun in life without her.'

Rashe forgot the past far more easily that Cilla could ever do. There
was a certain guilty delight in writing--

'MY DEAR HONOR,--Many thanks for your letter, and intended
kindnesses. The scene must, however, be deferred, as my cousins mean
to winter at Paris, and I can't resist the chance of hooking a
Marshal, or a Prince or two. Rashe's strain was a great sell but we
had capital fun, and shall hope for more success another season. I
would send you my diary if it were written out fair. We go so soon
that I can't run up to London, so I hope no one will be disturbed on
my account.

'Your affectionate CILLY.'

No need to say how often Lucilla would have liked to have recalled that
note for addition or diminution, how many misgivings she suffered on her
peculiar mode of catching Robins, how frequent were her disgusts with her
cousin, and how often she felt like a captive--the captive of her own
self-will.

'That's right!' said Horatia to Lolly. 'I was mortally afraid she would
stay at home to fall a prey to the incipient parson, but now he is choked
off, and Calthorp is really in earnest, we shall have the dear little
morsel doing well yet.'

CHAPTER X

O ye, who never knew the joys
Of friendship, satisfied with noise,
Fandango, ball, and rout,
Blush, when I tell you how a bird
A prison, with a friend, preferred,
To liberty without.--COWPER

Had Lucilla Sandbrook realized the effect of her note, she would never
have dashed it off; but, like all heedless people, pain out of her
immediate ken was nothing to her.

After the loving hopes raised by the curate's report, and after her own
tender and forgiving letter, Honor was pierced to the quick by the
scornful levity of those few lines. Of the ingratitude to