u. The money is yours at this moment,--to buy hair-pins
with, if you please. I had no idea that he could command so large a
sum."

"Three thousand pounds! The last money he gave me was half-a-crown,
and I thought that he was so stingy! I particularly wanted ten
shillings. I should have liked it so much better now if he had given
me a nice new five-pound note."

"You'd better tell him so."

"No; because then he'd give me that too. But with five pounds I
should have the feeling that I might do what I liked with it;--buy a
dressing-case, and a thing for a squirrel to run round in. But nobody
ever gives girls money like that, so that they can enjoy it."

"Oh, Lily; you ungrateful child!"

"No, I deny it. I'm not ungrateful. I'm very grateful, because his
heart was softened,--and because he cried and kissed you. I'll be
ever so good to him! But how I'm to thank him for giving me three
thousand pounds, I cannot think. It's a sort of thing altogether
beyond my line of life. It sounds like something that's to come to
me in another world, but which I don't want quite yet. I am grateful,
but with a misty, hazy sort of gratitude. Can you tell me how soon
I shall have a new pair of Balmoral boots because of this money? If
that were brought home to me I think it would enliven my gratitude."

The squire, as he rode back to Guestwick, fell again from that
animation, which Mrs Dale had described, into his natural sombre
mood. He thought much of his past life, declaring to himself the
truth of those words in which he had told his sister-in-law that his
heart had ever been kinder than his words. But the world, and all
those nearest to him in the world, had judged him always by his words
rather than by his heart. They had taken the appearance, which he
could not command or alter, rather than the facts, of which he had
been the master. Had he not been good to all his relations?--and yet
was there one among them that cared for him? "I'm almost sorry that
they are going to stay," he said to himself;--"I know that I shall
disappoint them." Yet when he met Bell at the Manor House he accosted
her cheerily, telling her with much appearance of satisfaction that
that flitting into Guestwick was not to be accomplished.

"I am so glad," said she. "It is long since I wished it."

"And I do not think your mother wishes it now."

"I am sure she does not. It was all a misunderstanding from the
first. When some of us could not do all that you