the other night so unconscionably late?" Bell and Lily both assured
her that their mother was none the worse for what she had gone
through; and then Mrs Eames got up and left the room, with the
declared purpose of looking for John and Mary, but bent, in truth, on
the production of some cake and sweet wine which she kept under lock
and key in the little parlour.

"Don't let's stay here very long," whispered Crosbie.

"No, not very long," said Lily. "But when you come to see my friends
you mustn't be in a hurry, Mr Crosbie."

"He had his turn with Lady Julia," said Bell, "and we must have ours
now."

"At any rate, Mrs Eames won't tell us to do our duty and to beware of
being too beautiful," said Lily.

Mary and John came into the room before their mother returned; then
came Mrs Eames, and a few minutes afterwards the cake and wine
arrived. It certainly was rather dull, as none of the party seemed to
be at their ease. The grandeur of Mr Crosbie was too great for Mrs
Eames and her daughter, and John was almost silenced by the misery of
his position. He had not yet answered Miss Roper's letter, nor had he
even made up his mind whether he would answer it or no. And then the
sight of Lily's happiness did not fill him with all that friendly joy
which he should perhaps have felt as the friend of her childhood. To
tell the truth, he hated Crosbie, and so he had told himself; and had
so told his sister also very frequently since the day of the party.

"I tell you what it is, Molly," he had said, "if there was any way of
doing it, I'd fight that man."

"What; and make Lily wretched?"

"She'll never be happy with him. I'm sure she won't. I don't want to
do her any harm, but yet I'd like to fight that man,--if I only knew
how to manage it."

And then he bethought himself that if they could both be slaughtered
in such an encounter it would be the only fitting termination to the
present state of things. In that way, too, there would be an escape
from Amelia, and, at the present moment, he saw none other.

When he entered the room he shook hands with all the party from
Allington, but, as he told his sister afterwards, his flesh crept
when he touched Crosbie. Crosbie, as he contemplated the Eames family
sitting stiff and ill at ease in their own drawing-room chairs, made
up his mind that it would be well that his wife should see as little
of John Eames as might be when she came to London;--not that he was
in any way jealous