tion would be in
telling her aunt, and in getting her aunt to make Tom understand that
there must be no more of it. Early on the following morning she found
herself in her aunt's bedroom.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LOUT.

"Aunt Emmeline, I want you to read this letter." So it was that Ayala
commenced the interview. At this moment Ayala was not on much better
terms with her aunt than she was with her cousin Augusta. Ayala was
a trouble to her,--Lady Tringle,--who was altogether perplexed with
the feeling that she had burdened herself with an inmate in her house
who was distasteful to her and of whom she could not rid herself.
Ayala had turned out on her hands something altogether different
from the girl she had intended to cherish and patronise. Ayala
was independent; superior rather than inferior to her own girls;
more thought of by others; apparently without any touch of that
subservience which should have been produced in her by her position.
Ayala seemed to demand as much as though she were a daughter of the
house, and at the same time to carry herself as though she were more
gifted than the daughters of the house. She was less obedient even
than a daughter. All this Aunt Emmeline could not endure with a
placid bosom. She was herself kind of heart. She acknowledged her
duty to her dead sister. She wished to protect and foster the orphan.
She did not even yet wish to punish Ayala by utter desertion. She
would protect her in opposition to Augusta's more declared malignity;
but she did wish to be rid of Ayala, if she only knew how.

She took her son's letter and read it, and as a matter of course
misunderstood the position. At Glenbogie something had been whispered
to her about Tom and Ayala, but she had not believed much in it.
Ayala was a child, and Tom was to her not much more than a boy. But
now here was a genuine love-letter,--a letter in which her son had
made a distinct proposition to marry the orphan. She did not stop to
consider why Ayala had brought the letter to her, but entertained at
once an idea that the two young people were going to vex her very
soul by a lamentable love affair. How imprudent she had been to let
the two young people be together in Rome, seeing that the matter had
been whispered to her at Glenbogie! "How long has this been going
on?" she asked, severely.

"He used to tease me at Glenbogie, and now he is doing it again,"
said Ayala.

"There must certainly be put an end to it. You