be off.

"Oh, he is going to prance. Have you got good hold of his head, sir?" to
the groom.

"Quite correct, 'm," grinned that official. "Quiet, 'Nancy,'" that being
the stable version of "Banshee."

"Let her go," said Jack, who had just tucked Mrs. Leigh in. A couple of
bounds, a smothering scream, and they disappeared in the evening gloom.

"That there old party ain't the guvener's usual form," meditated that
bat-man, as he walked back, for the cutter only carried two. "He seems to
set a deal of store by her, though. There's some young 'ooman at home,
where she lives, I'd take my dying dick."

Cecil and her father, who had seen them off, stopped laughing together
at Mrs. Leigh's peculiarities; and Bluebell, finding herself alone with
Mrs. Rolleston, felt impelled to try if she could not curtail her
sentence of banishment. Of course, her words were intended to conceal
her thoughts--love's first lesson is always hypocrisy.

"I know I am not very much use here," she began, "but still I shouldn't
like to think I was of none, and, therefore, I really don't want to stay
away more than a day or two."

A sudden look of penetration came into Mrs. Rolleston's face, and, with
more sarcasm in her voice than Bluebell's little speech appeared to
justify, she said,--

"My dear, scrupulous child, we _can_ get on without you longer than that,
so you may, with a clear conscience, think of your mother, who is dull
this dreadful weather."

Bluebell felt caught in a mesh and incapable of extricating herself, but
she made no attempt to conceal her reluctance to going.

"How long must I stay away?" said she, dolefully.

"Just till the days get a little longer--a fortnight or three weeks,
perhaps."

Bluebell made a gesture of despair (Bertie would be gone to a certainty
by then), and looked the picture of misery. Mrs. Rolleston's suspicions
were now convictions.

"My dear Bluebell," she began, impulsively, "I know there's some reason
for your dislike to going," and she gazed fixedly at her. No denial.
Bluebell hoped Mrs. Rolleston _had_ some inkling of how things were with
her and Bertie, and had she then persisted might easily have forced her
confidence; which would have considerably enlightened and dismayed the
elder lady, whose mind, being full of Jack, had never dreamed of Bertie.

Mrs. Rolleston, however, rapidly decided it would never do to encourage
her to talk of the matter, and that she had better put her foot on i