nce you
are with me you are my charge, and I could take you."

She considered a little. Both she and her friend knew that all her
religious habits were alien to Sir Harry, and that what he had
freely permitted, sometimes shared at Rockpier, was now only winked
at, and that if he had guessed the full extent of her observances he
would have stormily issued a prohibition. Could it be wrong to
spend part of her visit to Lady Susan with her hostess in a
sisterhood, when she had no doubt as to attending services which he
absolutely never dreamt of, and therefore did not forbid? The
sacred atmosphere and holy meditations, without external strife and
constant watchfulness, seemed to the poor girl like water to the
thirsty; and she thought, after all the harass and whirl of the
bazaar and race week, she might thus recruit her much-needed
strength for the decisive conflicts her majority would bring.

Lady Susan had no doubts. The 'grand old wreck' was in his present
aspect a hoary old persecutor, and charming Lady Tyrrell a worldly,
scheming elder sister. It was as much an act of charity to give
their victim an opportunity of devotion and support as if she had
been the child of abandoned parents in a back court in East London.
Reserve to prevent a prohibition was not in such cases treachery or
disobedience; and she felt herself doing a mother's part, as she
told her daughters, with some enjoyment of the mystery. Eleonora
made no promise, hoping to clear her mind by consideration, or to
get Julius's opinion. He and his wife dined at Sirenwood, and found
Joe Reynolds's drawings laid out for inspection, while Lady Susan
was advising that, instead of selling them, there should be an
industrial exhibition of all curiosities of art and nature to be
collected in the neighbourhood, and promising her own set of foreign
photographs and coloured costumes, which had served such purposes
many and many a time.

After dinner the good dame tried to talk to Rosamond on what she
deemed the most congenial subjects; but my Lady Rose had no notion
of 'shop' at a dinner-party, so she made languid answer that she
'left all that to the curates,' and escaped to a frivolous young
matron on the other side of the room, looking on while her husband
was penned in and examined on his services, and his choir, and his
system, and his decorations, and his classes, and his schools, for
all or any of which Lady Susan pressed on him the aid of the two
da