tell me all
before you go to bed?" I went back, anxious in truth to the messenger of
good tidings to my dear old friends.

Brief as my absence had been, Mrs. Mackenzie had taken advantage of that
moment again to outrage Clive and his father, and to announce that Rosa
might go to see this Miss Newcome, whom people respected because she was
rich, but whom she would never visit; no, never! "An insolent, proud,
impertinent thing! Does she take me for a housemaid?" Mrs. Mackenzie had
inquired.

"Am I dust to be trampled beneath her feet? Am I a dog that she can't
throw me a word?" Her arms were stretched out, and she was making this
inquiry as to her own canine qualities as I re-entered the room, and
remembered that Ethel had never once addressed a single word to Mrs.
Mackenzie in the course of her visit.

I affected not to perceive the incident, and presently said that I
wanted to speak to Clive in his studio. Knowing that I had brought my
friend one or two commissions for drawings, Mrs. Mackenzie was civil to
me, and did not object to our colloquies.

"Will you come too, and smoke a pipe, father?" says Clive.

"Of course your father intends to stay to dinner?" says the Campaigner,
with a scornful toss of her head. Clive groaned out as we were on the
stair, "that he could not bear this much longer, by heavens he could
not."

"Give the Colonel his pipe, Clive," said I. "Now, sir, down with you in
the sitter's chair, and smoke the sweetest cheroot you ever smoked
in your life! My dear, dear old Clive! you need not bear with the
Campaigner any longer; you may go to bed without this nightmare to-night
if you like; you may have your father back under your roof again."

"My dear Arthur! I must be back at ten, sir, back at ten, military time;
drum beats; no--bell tolls at ten, and gates close;" and he laughed and
shook his old head. "Besides, I am to see a young lady, sir; and she is
coming to make tea for me, and I must speak to Mrs. Jones to have all
things ready--all things ready;" and again the old man laughed as he
spoke.

His son looked at him and then at me with eyes full of sad meaning. "How
do you mean, Arthur," Clive said, "that he can come and stay with me,
and that that woman can go?"

Then feeling in my pocket for Mr. Luce's letter, I grasped my dear
Clive by the hand and bade him prepare for good news. I told him how
providentially, two days since, Ethel, in the library at Newcome,
looking into Orme's His