ery letter brought to her office, and for all this, as she
often told her friends in profound disgust, she received as salary no
more than "tuppence farden a day. It don't find me in shoe-leather;
no more it don't." As Mrs Crump was never seen out of her own house,
unless it was in church once a month, this latter assertion about her
shoe-leather could hardly have been true.

Lily had received another letter, and had answered it before Eames
made his promised visit to Allington. He, as will be remembered, had
also had a correspondence. He had answered Miss Roper's letter, and
had since that been living in fear of two things; in a lesser fear of
some terrible rejoinder from Amelia, and in a greater fear of a more
terrible visit from his lady-love. Were she to swoop down in very
truth upon his Guestwick home, and declare herself to his mother and
sister as his affianced bride, what mode of escape would then be left
for him? But this she had not yet done, nor had she even answered his
cruel missive.

"What an ass I am to be afraid of her!" he said to himself as he
walked along under the elms of Guestwick manor, which overspread the
road to Allington. When he first went over to Allington after his
return home, he had mounted himself on horseback, and had gone forth
brilliant with spurs, and trusting somewhat to the glories of his
dress and gloves. But he had then known nothing of Lily's engagement.
Now he was contented to walk; and as he had taken up his slouched
hat and stick in the passage of his mother's house, he had been very
indifferent as to his appearance. He walked quickly along the road,
taking for the first three miles the shade of the Guestwick elms, and
keeping his feet on the broad greensward which skirts the outside of
the earl's palings. "What an ass I am to be afraid of her!" And as he
swung his big stick in his hand, striking a tree here and there, and
knocking the stones from his path, he began to question himself in
earnest, and to be ashamed of his position in the world. "Nothing on
earth shall make me marry her," he said; "not if they bring a dozen
actions against me. She knows as well as I do, that I have never
intended to marry her. It's a cheat from beginning to end. If she
comes down here, I'll tell her so before my mother." But as the
vision of her sudden arrival came before his eyes, he acknowledged to
himself that he still held her in great fear. He had told her that he
loved her. He had writt