her we shall certainly go at the end of
March." Bell now had also sat down, and they both remained for some
time looking at the fire in silence.

"And why is it, Bell?" he said, at last. "But I don't know whether I
have a right to ask."

"You have a right to ask any question about us," she said. "My uncle
is very kind. He is more than kind; he is generous. But he seems to
think that our living here gives him a right to interfere with mamma.
We don't like that, and, therefore, we are going."

The doctor still sat on one side of the fire, and Bell still sat
opposite to him; but the conversation did not form itself very freely
between them. "It is bad news," he said, at last.

"At any rate, when we are ill you will not have so far to come and
see us."

"Yes, I understand. That means that I am ungracious not to
congratulate myself on having you all so much nearer to me; but I do
not in the least. I cannot bear to think of you as living anywhere
but here at Allington. Dales will be out of their place in a street
at Guestwick."

"That's hard upon the Dales, too."

"It is hard upon them. It's a sort of offshoot from that very
tyrannical law of noblesse oblige. I don't think you ought to go away
from Allington, unless the circumstances are very imperative."

"But they are very imperative."

"In that case, indeed!" And then again he fell into silence.

"Have you never seen that mamma is not happy here?" she said, after
another pause. "For myself, I never quite understood it all before as
I do now; but now I see it."

"And I have seen it;--have seen at least what you mean. She has led a
life of restraint; but then, how frequently is such restraint the
necessity of a life? I hardly think that your mother would move on
that account."

"No. It is on our account. But this restraint, as you call it, makes
us unhappy, and she is governed by seeing that. My uncle is generous
to her as regards money; but in other things,--in matters of
feeling,--I think he has been ungenerous."

"Bell," said the doctor; and then he paused.

She looked up at him, but made no answer. He had always called her
by her Christian name, and they two had ever regarded each other
as close friends. At the present moment she had forgotten all else
besides this, and yet she had infinite pleasure in sitting there and
talking to him.

"I am going to ask you a question which perhaps I ought not to ask,
only that I have known you so long that I almos