oceeded
to answer Lord Ilbury.

When that note was written, he placed it likewise before me, and I read it
also through. It simply referred him to Lady Knollys 'for an explanation
of the unhappy circumstances which compelled him to decline an invitation
which it would have made his niece and his daughter so happy to accept.'

'You see, my dear Maud, how frank I am with you,' he said, waving the open
note, which I had just read, slightly before he folded it. 'I think I may
ask you to reciprocate my candour.'

Dismissed from this interview, I ran to Milly, who burst into tears from
sheer disappointment, so we wept and wailed together. But in my grief I
think there was more reason.

I sat down to the dismal task of writing to my dear Lady Knollys. I
implored her to make her peace with my uncle. I told her how frank he had
been with me, and how he had shown me his sad reply to her letter. I told
her of the interview to which he had himself invited me with Dr. Bryerly;
how little disturbed he was by the accusation--no sign of guilt; quite the
contrary, perfect confidence. I implored of her to think the best, and
remembering my isolation, to accomplish a reconciliation with Uncle Silas.
'Only think,' I wrote, 'I only nineteen, and two years of solitude before
me. What a separation!' No broken merchant ever signed the schedule of his
bankruptcy with a heavier heart than did I this letter.

The griefs of youth are like the wounds of the gods--there is an ichor
which heals the scars from which it flows: and thus Milly and I consoled
ourselves, and next day enjoyed our ramble, our talk and readings, with a
wonderful resignation to the inevitable.

Milly and I stood in the relation of _Lord Duberly_ to _Doctor Pangloss_. I
was to mend her 'cackleology,' and the occupation amused us both. I think
at the bottom of our submission to destiny lurked a hope that Uncle Silas,
the inexorable, would relent, or that Cousin Monica, that siren, would win
and melt him to her purpose.

Whatever comfort, however, I derived from the absence of Dudley was not to
be of very long duration; for one morning, as I was amusing myself alone,
with a piece of worsted work, thinking, and just at that moment not
unpleasantly, of many things, my cousin Dudley entered the room.

'Back again, like a bad halfpenny, ye see. And how a' ye bin ever since,
lass? Purely, I warrant, be your looks. I'm jolly glad to see ye, I am; no
cattle going like ye, Maud.'