take care of that! And there's more to come if
the father likes, isn't there? He'll get that too: see if he doesn't."

"It is to be hoped he will--for Mrs. Lisle's sake. Otherwise, I cannot
say I care to discuss his prospects."

"Well," said Lydia after a pause, during which she turned a ring slowly
on her finger--"well, I'll wish him all the happiness he deserves."

Percival's lip curved a little: "Miss Bryant, are you absolutely
pitiless?"

Lydia's expression was rather blank. "What do you mean? No, I ain't,"
she said. "I've nothing more to do with him. He hasn't done me any harm,
and I won't wish him any. At least, only a little." With which small
ebullition of feminine tenderness and spite she fled hurriedly down
stairs to shed a few more tears, and left Thorne to write his letter to
Lisle. It was brief, and none the sweeter for that recent interview.

"I return the money," Percival wrote, "which you say was so useful to
you. I know that what you have sent me is not yours, but your wife's,
and I cannot conscientiously say that I think Mrs. Herbert Lisle is
indebted to me in any way.

"I have not delivered your message to your sister. I have no wish to
insult her in her trouble, and I know she would feel such persuasion a
cruel insult, as indeed I think it would be."

Judith at the same time was writing:

"From this time our paths must lie apart. I will never touch a penny of
your wife's money. Do not dare to offer me a share of it again. It seems
to me that all the shame and sorrow is mine, and you have only the
prosperity. Not for the whole world would I change burdens with you.

"Miss Crawford is going to give up her school at once. She will not see
or speak to me, for she suspects me of having been your accomplice. And
I cannot help blaming myself that I trusted you so foolishly. But I
could not have believed that you would have been false to her--our one
friend, our mother's friend. Is it possible that you do not see that
every one under her roof should have been sacred to you? But what is the
use of saying anything now?

"I don't know, after this, how to appeal to you, and I don't want any
promises; but if you feel any regret for the pain you have caused, and
if you really wish to do anything for me, I entreat you to be good to
Emmeline. It is the only favor I will ever ask of you. She is young and
weak, poor girl! and she has trusted you utterly. In God's name, do not
repay her trust as you have rep