me, Lucius?
You say it would be for the general peace.

L. I only said you would be better away than making yourself
obnoxious. I can't think how you can have the heart, Cis, such a
pet as you always were.

C. I would not hurt their feelings for the world, only my
improvement is too important to be sacrificed, and if no one else
will stand up for me, I must stand up for myself.

III. BRIDE-ELECT AND FATHER

SCENE.--THREE WEEKS LATER. BREAKFAST TABLE AT DARKGLADE VICARAGE,
MR. AVELAND AND EUPHRASIA READING THEIR LETTERS. THREE LITTLE
CHILDREN EATING BREAD AND MILK.

E. There! Mary has got the house at Brompton off her hands and can
come for good on the 11th. That is the greatest possible comfort.
She wants to bring her piano; it has a better tone than ours.

MR. A. Certainly! Little Miss Hilda there will soon be strumming
her scales on the old one, and Mary and Cis will send me to sleep in
the evening with hers.

E. Oh!

MR. A. Why, Phrasie, what's the matter?

E. This is a blow! Cicely is only coming to be bridesmaid, and
then going back to board at Kensington and go on with her studies.

MR. A. To board? All alone?

E. Oh! that's the way with young ladies!

MR. A. Mary cannot have consented.

E. Have you done, little folks? Then say grace, Hilda, and run out
till the lesson bell rings. Yes, poor Mary, I am afraid she thinks
all that Cecilia decrees is right; or if she does not naturally
believe so, she is made to.

MR. A. Come, come, Phrasie, I always thought Mary a model mother.

E. So did I, and so she was while the children were small, except
that they were more free and easy with her than was the way in our
time. And I think she is all that is to be desired to her son; but
when last I was in London, I cannot say I was satisfied, I thought
Cissy had got beyond her.

MR. A. For want of a father?

E. Not entirely. You know I could not think Charles Moldwarp quite
worthy of Mary, though she never saw it.

MR. A. Latterly we saw so little of him! He liked to spend his
holiday in mountain climbing, and Mary made her visits here alone.

E. Exactly so. Sympathy faded out between them, though she, poor
dear, never betrayed it, if she realised it, which I doubt. And as
Cissy took after her father, this may have weakened her allegiance
to her mother. At any rate, as soon as she was thought to have
outgrown her mother's teaching, those greater things, mother's
in