ink it is respectable, for my
part."

"Ah, my dear, the young men of the present day, they are a law to
themselves," said her friend. "They don't care for what is respectable.
Indeed, so far as I can see, they make it a sort of reproach; they let
nobodies pick up the prizes. And what do they expect it is all to end
in? I could tell them very well, if they would listen to me. The French
Revolution is what it will end in; but of course they will not listen to
anything one can say."

"Oh, you know we are Liberals," cried Minnie; "we don't go in with
that."

"If you are going to town to-morrow, Cavendish, I don't mind if I go with
you," said Warrender. "I have some business to look after. At least, it
is not exactly business," for he saw his mother's eyes turned on him
inquiringly; "it is a commission from a friend. I shall only stay a
night, mother; you need not look so surprised."

"It will do you good," she said quietly. "And why should you hurry back?
You will be the better for the change."

He gave her a suspicious, half-angry look, as if he saw more in her
words than met the eye. "I shall only be gone a single night," he said.

"I will do all I can to upset his good resolutions, Mrs. Warrender. He
shall go to all sorts of notorious places, to keep me in countenance. If
he can be beguiled into any little improprieties, I am your man."

"Don't be afraid," said the rector. "Dick's wickednesses are all
theoretical. I'd trust Georgie in the worst haunt he knows."

Dick looked up with a laugh, with some light word of contradiction, and
in a moment there gleamed before him, as by the touching of a spring,
as by the opening of a door, the real state of the case so far as he
was himself concerned. The present scene melted away to give place to
another,--to others which were burnt upon his memory in lines of fire;
to one which he could see in his imagination, with which he had a
horrible connection, which he could not dismiss out of his thoughts,
though he was in reality a fugitive from it, flying the vicinity, the
possible sight, the spectre of a ruin which was beyond description.
Merely to think of this amid an innocent company, around this decorous
table, brought a sickening sensation, a giddiness both mental and
physical. He turned his head away from the eyes of the mother, who, he
felt, must, in her experience, divine something from the expression
in his, to meet the pleased and guileless look with which Chatty wa