?"

"Nothing. Crosbie won't be fool enough to do anything. A man becomes
an outlaw when he plays such a game as he has played. Anybody's hand
may be raised against him with impunity. He can't show his face, you
know. He can't come forward and answer questions as to what he has
done. There are offences which the law can't touch but which outrage
public feeling so strongly that any one may take upon himself the
duty of punishing them. He has been thrashed, and that will stick to
him till he dies."

"Do tell Johnny from me that I hope he didn't get hurt," said Lady
Julia. The old lady could not absolutely congratulate him on his feat
of arms, but she did the next thing to it.

But the earl did congratulate him, with a full open assurance of his
approval.

"I hope," he said "I should have done the same at your age, under
similar circumstances, and I'm very glad that he proved less
difficult than the bull. I'm quite sure you didn't want any one to
help you with Master Crosbie. As for that other person at Allington,
if I understand such matters at all, I think she will forgive you."
It may, however, be a question whether the earl did understand such
matters at all. And then he added, in a postscript: "When you write
to me again,--and don't be long first, begin your letter 'My dear
Lord De Guest,'--that is the proper way."

CHAPTER XXXVII

An Old Man's Complaint

"Have you been thinking again of what I was saying to you, Bell?"
Bernard said to his cousin one morning.

"Thinking of it, Bernard? Why should I think more of it? I had hoped
that you had forgotten it yourself."

"No," he said; "I am not so easy-hearted as that. I cannot look on
such a thing as I would the purchase of a horse, which I could give
up without sorrow if I found that the animal was too costly for my
purse. I did not tell you that I loved you till I was sure of myself,
and having made myself sure I cannot change at all."

"And yet you would have me change."

"Yes, of course I would. If your heart be free now, it must of course
be changed before you come to love any man. Such change as that is to
be looked for. But when you have loved, then it will not be easy to
change you."

"But I have not."

"Then I have a right to hope. I have been hanging on here, Bell,
longer than I ought to have done, because I could not bring myself to
leave you without speaking of this again. I did not wish to seem to
you to be importunate--"

"If you