el, rising; 'shall we come
upstairs?'

James took up the candles, and Louis followed, considerably hungry, and
for once provoked by Isabel's serene certainty that nobody cared
whether there were anything to eat. However, he had forgotten all by
the time he came upstairs, and began to deliver a message from Lady
Conway, that she was going to write in a day or two to beg for a visit
from Isabel during her sojourn at Estminster, a watering-place about
thirty miles distant. Isabel's face lighted with pleasure. 'I could
go?' she said, eagerly turning towards James.

'Oh, yes, if you wish it,' he answered, gruffly, as if vexed at her
gratification.

'I mean, of course, if you can spare me,' she said, with an air of more
reserve.

'If you wish it, go by all means. I hope you will.'

'The Christmas holidays are so near, that we may both go,' said Isabel;
but James still had not recovered his equanimity, and Louis thought it
best to begin talking of other things; and, turning to James, launched
into the results of his Inglewood crops, and the grand draining plan
which was to afford Marksedge work for the winter, and in which his
father had become much interested. But he did not find that ready heed
to all that occupied him of which he used to be certain at the Terrace.
Isabel cared not at all for farming, and took no part in 'mere country
squire's talk;' and James was too much overburthened with troubles and
anxieties to enter warmly into those of others. Of those to whom
Louis's concerns had been as their own, one had been taken from him,
the other two were far away; and the cold 'yes,' 'very good,' fell
coldly on his ear.

The conversation reverted to the school; and here it appeared that two
years' experience had taken away the freshness of novelty, and the
cycle of disappointment had begun. More boys were quitting the school
than the new-comers could balance; and James spoke with acute vexation
of the impracticability of the boys, and the folly of the parents. The
attendance at his evening lectures had fallen off; and he declared that
there was a spirit of opposition to whatever he did. The boys
disobeyed, knowing that they should be favoured at home, and if they
were punished, the parents talked of complaints to the trustees. The
Sunday teaching was treated as especially obnoxious: the genteel
mothers talked ridiculously about its resembling a charity-school, the
fathers did not care whether their sons went