remainder of the business was in train to be
easily wound up by Mr. Ward. Mr. Dynevor's gratitude was not
overpowering: he was short and dry, privately convinced that he could
have managed matters much better himself, and charging all the loss on
Fitzjocelyn's folly in letting Robson escape. But, though James was
hurt at his unthankfulness, and Lord Ormersfield could have been very
angry, the party most concerned did not take it much to heart; he
believed he had done his best, but an experienced eye might detect
blunders, and he knew it was hard to trust affairs out of one's own
hands.

Even the Earl was glad to escape to the sitting-room, though every one
was talking at once, and Mercy the loudest; and Louis, as the children
would call him in spite of their mamma, was at once seized on by Kitty
to be introduced to 'our brother.'

'And what is his name, Kitty?'

'Woland!' shouted all the young ladies in chorus.

'Sir Woland is in the book that mamma did make,' said Kitty.

Louis looked at Isabel with laughing eyes.

'It was Uncle Oliver's great wish,' she said, 'and we did not wish to
remember the days of Sir Hubert.'

Before Lord Ormersfield was quite deafened, Louis recollected that they
must show Mary at the House Beautiful; and they took leave. The Earl
begged James to come back to dinner with them, and Louis asked if Clara
could not find room in the carriage too. It was the earnest of what
Ormersfield was to be to her henceforth, and she was all delight, and
earnestness to be allowed to walk home with James by starlight. And
the evening realized all she could wish. The gentlemen had their
conversation in the dining-room, and Mary and Clara sat on the steps
together in the warm twilight, and talked of granny; and Clara poured
out all that Mary did not yet know of Louis.

'I hear you have been in hysterics again,' had been Lord Fitzjocelyn's
greeting to Charlotte. 'You are prepared for the consequences.'

Charlotte was prepared. The mutual pardon had not been very hard to
gain, and Tom had only to combat her declarations that it was downright
presumptuous for her to have more than master had a year, and her
protests that she could not leave her mistress and the dear children in
their poverty. The tidings that they were relieved from their present
straits answered this scruple, and Charlotte was a pretty picture of
shrinking exultation when she conducted her betrothed to Mrs. Martha,
who, however,