ppeared at
Hunsdon, and Maurice's opportunity arrived. It was during their
invariable _tete-a-tete_ while Mr. Beresford slept that the wished-for
conversation took place, and Lady Dighton unconsciously helped her
cousin to begin it by telling him laughing that she had been looking out
for a wife for him, and found one that she thought would do exactly.

"You must contrive by some means or other," she said, "to get away from
Hunsdon a little more than you have been doing, and come over to Dighton
for a day or two, that I may introduce you."

"I wish with all my heart," he answered quickly, "that I could get away
from Hunsdon for a little while, but I am afraid I should use my liberty
to go much further than Dighton."

She looked at him with surprise.

"I did not know," she said, "that you had any friends in England except
here."

"I have none. What I mean is that I want to go back to Canada for a week
or two."

"To Canada! The other side of the world! What do you mean?"

"Nothing very unreasonable. I am very uneasy about my father, who is
almost as great an invalid as my grandfather, and has no one but an old
housekeeper to take care of him. I should like to go and bring him to
England."

It was very well for Maurice to try to speak as coolly as possible, and
even to succeed in making his voice sound perfectly innocent and
natural, but he was of much too frank a nature to play off this little
piece of dissimulation without a tell-tale change of countenance. Lady
Dighton's sharp eyes saw quite plainly that there was something untold,
but she took no notice of that for the present, and answered as if she
saw nothing.

"Have you worse accounts of his health?"

"No; not worse. But he will be quite alone."

"More alone than when you first left him? I do not quite understand."

"Yes; some very near neighbours--old friends of his and my mother's--are
going to leave Cacouna. I had no reason to be uneasy about him while
they were there. Do you think my grandfather could be persuaded to spare
me for six weeks?"

"Not willingly, I think. Could not my uncle come home without your
going?"

Maurice felt as if he were caught in his own trap, but he recollected
himself in a moment.

"There would be many things to do," he said. "Affairs to settle, the
farm to sell or let, and the household, small as it is, to break up."

Lady Dighton laughed outright.

"And you imagine that you could do all that, and carry your fat