odfather had insulted her.

It was pretty to see his tenderness, as he detached the little girl
from her hold, and laid her in the cot, making a little murmuring
sound; and boasted how she would have shown off if awake, and laughed
over her droll little jealousies of his even touching the twins. As
she was asleep, he might venture; and it was comical to hear him
declaring that no one need mistake them for each other, and to see him
trying to lay them side by side on his knees to be compared, when they
would roll over, and interlace their little scratching fingers; and
Louis stood by teasing him, and making him defend their beauty in terms
that became extravagant. He was really happy here; the careworn look
smoothed away, the sharpness left his tones, and there was nothing but
joyous exultation and fondness in his whole manner.

The smile did not last long, for Louis was well-nigh thrown downstairs
by a dustpan in a dark corner, and James was heard muttering that
nothing in that house was ever in its right place; and while Louis was
suggesting that it was only himself who was not in the right place,
they entered the drawing-room, which, like the lady, was in the same
condition as that in which he had left it. Since Isabel had lost
Marianne and other appliances, she had thought it not worth while to
dress for dinner; so nothing had happened, except that the hermit had
proved to be Adeline's great uncle, and had begun to clear up the
affair of the sacrilege.

He was reluctant to leave off when the gentlemen appeared; but Isabel
shut him up, and quietly held out the portfolio to James, who put it on
the side-table, and began to clear the books away and restore some sort
of order; but it was a task beyond his efforts.

Dinner was announced by Charlotte, as usual, all neat grace and
simplicity, in her black dress and white apron, but flushed and heated
by exertions beyond her strength. All that depended on her had been
well done; but it would not seem to have occurred to her mistress that
three people ate more than two; and to Louis, who had been too busy to
take any luncheon, the two dishes seemed alarmingly small. One was of
haricot mutton, the other of potatoes; and Charlotte might be seen to
blush as she carried Lord Fitzjocelyn the plate containing a chop
resembling Indian rubber, decorated with grease and with two balls of
nearly raw carrot, and followed it up with potatoes apparently all
bruises.

Louis talk