mpstead
as his young patron.

"I am sure my father would never do that," said Hampstead, angrily.

"It looks very like it. I have devoted all the best of my life to his
service, and he now talks of dismissing me as though I were no better
than a servant."

"Whatever he does, he will, I am sure, have adequate cause for
doing."

"I have done nothing but my duty. It is out of the question that a
man in my position should submit to orders as to what he is to talk
about and what not. It is natural that Lady Kingsbury should come to
me in her troubles."

"If you will take my advice," said Lord Hampstead, in that tone
of voice which always produces in the mind of the listener a
determination that the special advice offered shall not be taken,
"you will comply with my father's wishes while it suits you to live
in his house. If you cannot do that, it would become you, I think,
to leave it." In every word of this there was a rebuke; and Mr.
Greenwood, who did not like being rebuked, remembered it.

"Of course I am nobody in this house now," said the Marchioness in
her last interview with her stepson. It is of no use to argue with an
angry woman, and in answer to this Hampstead made some gentle murmur
which was intended neither to assent or to dispute the proposition
made to him. "Because I ventured to disapprove of Mr. Roden as a
husband for your sister I have been shut up here, and not allowed to
speak to any one."

"Fanny has left the house, so that she may no longer cause you
annoyance by her presence."

"She has left the house in order that she may be near the abominable
lover with whom you have furnished her."

"This is not true," said Hampstead, who was moved beyond his control
by the double falseness of the accusation.

"Of course you can be insolent to me, and tell me that I speak
falsehoods. It is part of your new creed that you should be neither
respectful to a parent, nor civil to a lady."

"I beg your pardon, Lady Kingsbury,"--he had never called her Lady
Kingsbury before,--"if I have been disrespectful or uncivil, but your
statements were very hard to bear. Fanny's engagement with Mr. Roden
has not even received my sanction. Much less was it arranged or
encouraged by me. She has not gone to Hendon Hall to be near Mr.
Roden, with whom she had undertaken to hold no communication as long
as she remains there with me. Both for my own sake and for hers I
am bound to repudiate the accusation." Then he went