y of that. In what are you going to be other than she
wishes you to be? Are not her fears mistaken?'

Pitt smiled a grave smile; again stopped in his work and stood opposite
her.

'I might say "yes" and "no,"' he answered. 'I do not expect to have a
red cross embroidered on my sleeve, like the old crusaders. But judge
yourself. Can those who live to do the will of God be just like those
whose one concern is to do their own will?'

'Mr. Dallas, you insinuate, or your words might be taken to insinuate,
that all the rest of us are in the latter class!'

'Whose will do you do?' he said.

There was no answer, for Betty had too much pluck to speak falsely, and
too much sense not to know what was truth. She accordingly did not say
anything, and after waiting a minute or two Pitt went on with his
preparations, locking up drawers, packing up boxes, taking down and
putting away the many objects that filled the room. There was not a
little work of this sort to be done, and he went on with it busily, and
with an evidently trained and skilled hand.

'Then, after finishing with law, do you expect to come back here and
unpack all these pretty things again?' she said finally.

'Perhaps. I do not know.'

'Perhaps you will settle in England?'

'I do not yet know what is the work that I have to do in the world. I
_shall_ know, but I do not know now. It may be to go to India, or to
Greenland; or it may be to come here. Though I do not now see what I
should do in Seaforth that would be worth living for.'

India or Greenland! For a young man who was heir to no end of money,
and would have acres of land! Miss Betty perceived that here was
something indeed very different from the general run of rich young men,
and that Mrs. Dallas had not been so far wrong in her forebodings. 'How
very absurd!' she said to herself as she went away down the open
staircase; 'and what a pity!'

CHAPTER XXXIX.

_SKIRMISHING_.

To the great chagrin of his mother, and, indeed, of everybody, Pitt
took his departure a few days before the necessary set termination of
his visit. He must, he declared, have a few days to run down from
London into the country and find out the Gainsborough family; if
Colonel Gainsborough and his daughter had really gone home, he must
know.

'What on earth do you want to know for?' his lather had angrily asked.
'What concern is it to you, in any way? Pitt, I wish you would take all
the time you have and use it to m