"Would she like to go anywhere?" said the squire again, anxious, if
he could, to afford solace by some act of generosity. At this moment
he would have settled a hundred a year for life upon his niece if by
so doing he could have done her any good.

"She will be better at home," said Mrs Dale. "Poor thing. For a while
she will wish to avoid going out."

"I suppose so;" and then there was a pause. "I'll tell you what,
Mary; I don't understand it. On my honour I don't understand it.
It is to me as wonderful as though I had caught the man picking my
pence out of my pocket. I don't think any man in the position of a
gentleman would have done such a thing when I was young. I don't
think any man would have dared to do it. But now it seems that a
man may act in that way and no harm come to him. He had a friend
in London who came to me and talked about it as though it were
some ordinary, everyday transaction of life. Yes; you may come in,
Bernard. The poor child knows it all now."

Bernard offered to his aunt what of solace and sympathy he had to
offer, and made some sort of half-expressed apology for having
introduced this wolf into their flock. "We always thought very much
of him at his club," said Bernard.

"I don't know much about your London clubs nowadays," said his uncle,
"nor do I wish to do so if the society of that man can be endured
after what he has now done."

"I don't suppose half-a-dozen men will ever know anything about it,"
said Bernard.

"Umph!" ejaculated the squire. He could not say that he wished
Crosbie's villainy to be widely discussed, seeing that Lily's name
was so closely connected with it. But yet he could not support the
idea that Crosbie should not be punished by the frown of the world at
large. It seemed to him that from this time forward any man speaking
to Crosbie should be held to have disgraced himself by so doing.

"Give her my best love," he said, as Mrs Dale got up to take her
leave; "my very best love. If her old uncle can do anything for her
she has only to let me know. She met the man in my house, and I feel
that I owe her much. Bid her come and see me. It will be better for
her than moping at home. And Mary"--this he said to her, whispering
into her ear--"think of what I said to you about Bell."

Mrs Dale, as she walked back to her own house, acknowledged to
herself that her brother-in-law's manner was different to her from
anything that she had hitherto known of him.

During