doing so, Sam returned to say that his father had
stepped out, but would be back in half an hour, and Mrs. Dockwrath,
finding it impossible to make use of her company sitting-room, took
her old lover into the family apartment which they all ordinarily
occupied.

"You can sit down there at any rate without it all crunching under
you, up to nothing." And she emptied for him as she spoke the seat
of an old well-worn horse-hair bottomed arm-chair. "As to them tin
things I wouldn't trust myself on one of them; and so I told him,
angry as it made him. But now about poor Lady Mason--. Sam and Molly,
you go into the garden, there's good children. They is so ready with
their ears, John; and he contrives to get everything out of 'em. Now
do tell me about this."

Kenneby could not help thinking that the love match between Miriam
and her husband had not turned out in all respects well, and I fear
that he derived from the thought a certain feeling of consolation.
"He" was spoken about in a manner that did not betoken unfailing love
and perfect confidence. Perhaps Miriam was at this moment thinking
that she might have done better with her youth and her money! She
was thinking of nothing of the kind. Her mind was one that dwelt on
the present, not on the past. She was unhappy about her furniture,
unhappy about the frocks of those four younger children, unhappy that
the loaves of bread went faster and faster every day, very unhappy
now at the savageness with which her husband prosecuted his anger
against Lady Mason. But it did not occur to her to be unhappy because
she had not become Mrs. Kenneby.

Mrs. Dockwrath had more to tell in the matter than had Kenneby, and
when the elder of the children who were at home had been disposed of
she was not slow to tell it. "Isn't it dreadful, John, to think that
they should come against her now, and the will all settled as it was
twenty year ago? But you won't say anything against her; will you
now, John? She was always a good friend to you; wasn't she? Though
it wasn't much use; was it?" It was thus that she referred to the
business before them, and to the love passages of her early youth at
the same time.

"It's a very dreadful affair," said Kenneby, very solemnly; "and the
more I think of it the more dreadful it becomes."

"But you won't say anything against her, will you? You won't go over
to his side; eh, John?"

"I don't know much about sides," said he.

"He'll get himself into tr