st not keep
Lady Mary waiting;" and she was gone.

Charles heard the carriage roll away again, and when half an hour later
he sauntered back towards the house, he was surprised to see Lady Mary
sitting in the drawing-room window.

"What! Not gone, after all!" he exclaimed, in a voice in which surprise
was more predominant than pleasure.

"No, Charles," returned Lady Mary in her measured tones, looking slowly
up at him over her gold-rimmed spectacles. "I felt a slight return of my
old enemy, and Miss Deyncourt kindly undertook to make my excuses to
Mrs. Thursby."

No one knew what the old enemy was, or in what manner his mysterious
assaults on Lady Mary were conducted; but it was an understood thing
that she had private dealings with him, in which he could make himself
very disagreeable.

"Has Molly gone with her?"

"No; Molly is making jam in the kitchen, I believe. Miss Deyncourt most
good-naturedly offered to take her with her; but,"--with a shake of the
head--"the poor child's totally unrestrained appetites and lamentable
self-will made her prefer to remain where she was."

"I am afraid," said Charles, meditatively, as if the idea were entirely
a novel one, "Molly is getting a little spoiled among us. It is natural
in you, of course; but there is no excuse for me. There never is. There
are, I confess, moments when I don't regard the child's immortal welfare
sufficiently to make her present existence less enjoyable. What a round
of gayety Molly's life is! She flits from flower to flower, so to speak;
from me to cook and the jam-pots; from the jam-pots to some fresh
delight in the loft, or in your society. Life is one long feast to
Molly. Whatever that old impostor the Future may have in store for her,
at any rate she is having a good time now."

There was a shade of regretful sadness in Charles's voice that ruffled
his aunt.

"The child is being ruined," she said, with resigned bitterness.

"Not a bit of it. I was spoiled as a child, and look at me!"

"You _are_ spoiled. I don't spoil you; but other people do. Society
does. And the result is that you are so hard to please that I don't
believe you will ever marry. You look for a perfection in others which
is not to be found in yourself."

"I don't fancy I should appear to advantage side by side with
perfection," said Charles, in his most careless manner; and he rose, and
wandered away into the garden.

He was irritated with Lady Mary, with her pleased