heard you say that a woman may do as much as a man."

"That was before I had learned my lesson properly. I know better than
that now. Oh dear! I have no doubt it is all for the best as it is,
but I have a kind of wish that I might be allowed to go out and milk
the cows."

"And may you not milk the cows if you wish it, Lady Laura?"

"By no means;--not only not milk them, but hardly look at them. At
any rate, I must not talk about them." Phineas of course understood
that she was complaining of her husband, and hardly knew how to reply
to her. He had been sharp enough to perceive already that Mr. Kennedy
was an autocrat in his own house, and he knew Lady Laura well enough
to be sure that such masterdom would be very irksome to her. But he
had not imagined that she would complain to him. "It was so different
at Saulsby," Lady Laura continued. "Everything there seemed to be my
own."

"And everything here is your own."

"Yes,--according to the prayer-book. And everything in truth is my
own,--as all the dainties at the banquet belonged to Sancho the
Governor."

"You mean," said he,--and then he hesitated; "you mean that Mr.
Kennedy stands over you, guarding you for your own welfare, as the
doctor stood over Sancho and guarded him?"

There was a pause before she answered,--a long pause, during which he
was looking away over the lake, and thinking how he might introduce
the subject of his love. But long as was the pause, he had not begun
when Lady Laura was again speaking. "The truth is, my friend," she
said, "that I have made a mistake."

"A mistake?"

"Yes, Phineas, a mistake. I have blundered as fools blunder, thinking
that I was clever enough to pick my footsteps aright without asking
counsel from any one. I have blundered and stumbled and fallen, and
now I am so bruised that I am not able to stand upon my feet." The
word that struck him most in all this was his own Christian name. She
had never called him Phineas before. He was aware that the circle
of his acquaintance had fallen into a way of miscalling him by his
Christian name, as one observes to be done now and again in reference
to some special young man. Most of the men whom he called his friends
called him Phineas. Even the Earl had done so more than once on
occasions in which the greatness of his position had dropped for a
moment out of his mind. Mrs. Low had called him Phineas when she
regarded him as her husband's most cherished pupil; and Mrs. Bunce