ery much.'

'You are all so kind; beside, I belong in a manner you; but what could
it signify to any one else? And here I find that I have vexed every
one.'

'Ah!' said Amy, 'mamma said she was afraid it would give offence.'

'I ought to have attended to her. It was a fit of self-will in managing
myself,' said Guy, murmuring low, as if trying to find the real
indictment; 'yet I thought it a positive duty; wrong every way.'

'What has happened?' said Amy, turning back with him, though she had
reached the door.

'Why, the first person I met was Mr. Gordon; and he spoke like your
father, half in joke, and I thought entirely so; he said something about
all the world being in such a rage, that I was a bold man to venture
into Broadstone. Then, while I was at Mr. Lascelles', in came Dr.
Mayerne. 'We missed you at the dinner,' he said; 'and I hear you shirked
the ball, too.' I told him how it was, and he said he was glad that
was all, and advised me to go and call on Colonel Deane and explain. I
thought that the best way--indeed, I meant it before, and was walking
to his lodgings when Maurice de Courcy met me. 'Ha!' he cries out,
'Morville! I thought at least you would have been laid up for a month
with the typhus fever! As a friend, I advise you to go home and catch
something, for it is the only excuse that will serve you. I am not quite
sure that it will not be high treason for me to be seen speaking to
you.' I tried to get at the rights of it, but he is such a harum-scarum
fellow there was no succeeding. Next I met Thorndale, who only bowed
and passed on the other side of the street--sign enough how it was with
Philip; so I thought it best to go at once to the Captain, and get a
rational account of what was the matter.'

'Did you?' said Amy, who, though concerned and rather alarmed, had been
smiling at the humorous and expressive tones with which he could not
help giving effect to his narration.

'Yes. Philip was at home, and very--very--'

'Gracious?' suggested Amy, as he hesitated for a word.

'Just so. Only the vexatious thing was, that we never could succeed in
coming to an understanding. He was ready to forgive; but I could not
disabuse him of an idea--where he picked it up I cannot guess--that I
had stayed away out of pique. He would not even tell me what he thought
had affronted me, though I asked him over and over again to be only
straightforward; he declared I knew.'

'How excessively provoking!' cried