of his great distress and difficulties? Ha, ha! thought
so! Fine lady wife! No end of children--served him right!--to bring
down his pride.

Lord Ormersfield hazarded a hint that James had seen his errors, and
the school was no longer in the way.

'No, no!' said Oliver. 'Too late now. Drink as he has brewed. He
should have thought twice before he broke my poor mother's heart with
his cantankerous ways. Cheveleigh beneath him, forsooth! I'm not
going to have it cut up for a lot of trumpery girls! I've settled the
property and whatever other pickings there may be upon my little
Clara--grateful, and worthy of it! Her husband shall take Dynevor name
and arms--unless, to be sure, he had a title of his own. The girl was
much admired at Rome last winter, had a fair offer or two, but not a
word will she say to any of them. I can't tell what's in her head, not
I!'

And he looked knowingly at Lord Ormersfield, and willingly extended his
stay at Aix-la-Chapelle, letting Fitzjocelyn organize expeditions from
thence to Liege and other places in the neighbourhood.

The two cousins were so glad to be together, and the Earl so much
pleased that Louis should have anything which gave him so much delight
as this meeting with his old playfellow, that he did all in his power
to facilitate and prolong their intercourse. He often sacrificed
himself to Oliver's prosings on the Equatorial navigation, that the two
young people might be at liberty; and he invited Clara to their early
breakfast and walk before her uncle wanted her in the morning. These
were Clara's times of greatest happiness, except that it gave her a new
and strange sensation to be talked to by his lordship like a
grown-up--nay, a sensible woman. Once she said to herself, laughing,
'He really treats me almost as if I were poor Mary herself.' And then
came another flash: 'Perhaps he would even like me on the same terms!'
And then she laughed again, and shook her head: 'No, no, my Lord, your
son is much too good for that! Uncle Oliver would not have looked so
benignant at us when we were sitting in the gardens last night, if he
had known that I was giving Louis all my Lima letters. I wish they
were more worth having! It was very stupid of me not to know Mary
better, so that we write like two old almanacs. However, my letter
from hence will be worth its journey to Peru.'

Clara's heart was several degrees lighter, both from the pleasure of
the meeting and