y him left alone
for six months and never seeing me!... Oh dear!--you know what I mean."
For she had made the slip that was so usual. She brushed it aside as a
thing that could not be helped, and would even be sure to happen again,
and continued:--"Irene has just written to me. I got her letter to-day."

"Well?"

"She makes what I think a very good suggestion--for me to go to Pensham
to stay a week after Christmas, and then go in for.... What do you call
it?... the Self-denying Ordinance in earnest afterwards. You don't
mind?"

"Not in the least, as long as your mother agrees. Is that Miss
Torrens's--Irene's--letter?"

"No. It's another one I want to speak to you about. Wait with
patience!... I was going to say what exasperating parents I have
inherited ... from somewhere!"

"From your grandparents, I suppose! But why?"

"Because when I say, may I do this or may I say that, you always say,
'Yes if your mother,' etcetera, and then mamma quotes you to squash me.
I don't think it's playing the game."

"I think I gather from your statement, which is a little obscure, that
your mamma and I are like the two proctors in Dickens's novel.
Well!--it's a time-honoured arrangement as between parents, though I
admit it may be exasperating to their young. What's the other letter?"

"I want to tell you about it first," said Gwen. She then told, without
obscurity this time, the events which had followed the Earl's departure
from the Towers a week since. "And then comes this letter," she
concluded. "Isn't it terrible?"

"Let's see the letter," said the Earl. She handed it to him; and then,
going behind his high chair, looked over him as he read. No one ever
waits really patiently for another to read what he or she has already
read. So Gwen did not. She changed the elbow she leaned on, restlessly;
bit her lips, turn and turn about; pulled her bracelets round and round,
and watched keenly for any chance of interposing an abbreviated _precis_
of the text, to expedite the reading. Her father preferred to understand
the letter, rather than to get through it in a hurry and try back; so he
went deliberately on with it, reading it half aloud, with comments:

"AT STRIDES COTTAGE,
"CHORLTON-UNDER-BRADBURY,
"_November 22, 1854_.

"MY LADY,

"I have followed your instructions, and brought the old Mrs.
Prichard here to stay until you may please to make another
arrangement. My mother will gladly remain at my dau