side of the house."

"Who is flattering now?" Gilbert asked; "but seriously, mother, you
shall accept an invitation to the Wells Palace, you must promise to do
so. The bishop said something about November, if you did not mind the
falling leaves."

"I shall wait till I am asked," Mrs. Arundel said. "If his lordship has
buried me in the dust of years--out of sight and out of mind--I don't
see why he should unearth me now."

"And yet you sent your son to call you to mind; now that is unfair,
mother. You urged me to go to the Palace at Wells, and now you won't
take advantage of what is growing out of it. But to go back to Falconer;
a stout, middle-aged gentleman, of small means and weak chest, wants to
travel for a year. The bishop suggested Mr. Falconer should give him his
son to lead about, as he had previously washed several black sheep to a
very fair whiteness, paying expenses, but no further remuneration. If
Melville can be got off under such auspices, it will be a grand step in
the right direction. Poor fellow! he has got into his head the absolute
necessity of seeing the world, and I, who know him pretty well, think
that there would be less danger of mischief if he were allowed to follow
his bent, than if he were to be forced to follow the pursuits of a
country life at Fair Acres, which he thinks it grand to despise. He
talks with amazing coolness of all he shall do when he _does_ come, and
till he has learned a lesson, he would be a frightful nuisance to them
all. The airs he gives himself to the poor old steward are preposterous;
but the worst thing about him is the way he speaks to his mother."

"What is she like?"

"She is a very good woman, rather priding herself on setting aside all
conventionality, and bustling about the house, and keeping everyone up
to their duty but her son! Is it not extraordinary? She has ruined him
with stupid indulgence, and yet she is strict enough with the rest--even
with----"

"Joyce!" His mother supplied the word with a smile.

"Yes, even with Joyce," he rejoined; but starting up, with an
exclamation of dismay:

"Did you know Maythorne was in Clifton, mother?"

Mrs. Arundel followed the direction of her son's eyes, and there on the
broken, uneven slopes which lay before Sion Hill, came Gratian, chatting
gaily to a man of some six-and-thirty or forty, who answered very well
to the description a poet gave some years after of "the dandy despot,
the jewelled mass of milliner