started afresh. "Raymond, could we
not live at Swanslea, if it is bought for us?"

"Swanslea! Five miles off! Impossible."

Cecil was silent.

"My dear Cecil," he said, after a few moments' consideration, "I can
understand that you felt unfortunately crowded last year, but all
that is over, and you must see that we are necessary to my mother,
and that all my duties require me to live at home."

"You could attend to the property from Swanslea."

"The property indeed! I meant my mother!"

"She has Anne."

"Anne will soon be in Africa--even if she were more of a companion.
I am sorry it is a trial to you; for my proper place is clearly with
my mother, the more in her helpless state, and with my brothers gone
out into the world. Now that the numbers are smaller, you will find
it much easier to take the part that I most earnestly wish should be
yours."

"I cannot get on with her."

"Do not say so! Do not think so! To have Rosamond there with her
Irish ease, and her reserve, kept you in the background before; I
say it, but I could not help it; and now there will be no hindrance
to your drawing together. There is nothing I so desire."

If the carriage had not stopped as he spoke Cecil would not have
uttered the thought that smote her, namely, that his desire was on
behalf, not of his wife, but of his mother, to whom he was ready to
sacrifice her happiness without a pang. She did not see that he
could imagine no greater happiness for her than a thorough love of
his mother.

They certainly were not the happiest couple present as they walked
up-stairs, looking like a model husband and wife, with their name
echoing from landing to landing.

If any expression savouring of slang could possibly be applied to
Raymond, he might be said to be struck all of a heap by his wife's
proposition. He had never even thought of the possibility of making
a home anywhere but at Compton Poynsett, or of his wife wishing that
he should do so; and proverbial sayings about the incompatability of
relatives-in-law suddenly assumed a reasonableness that he could not
bear to remember.

But his courtesy and sense of protection, trained by a woman of the
old school, would not suffer him to relax his attention to his wife.
Though he was very anxious to get back to the house, he would not
quit her neighbourhood till he had found Frank and intrusted her to
him.

He was not happy about Frank. The youth was naturally of an
intellect