"There might be. And, if you and he would let me have any corner for
myself, then I should be happy. Then I would not want to die. You
would, wouldn't you?"

"How can I talk about it, Ayala? There isn't such a thing. But
yet,--but yet; oh, Ayala, do you not know that to have you with me
would be better than anything?"

"No;--not better than anything;--second best. He would be best. I do
so hope that he may be 'he.' Come in." There was a knock at the door,
and Aunt Emmeline, herself, entered the room.

"Now, my dears, the horses are standing there, and the men are coming
up for the luggage. Ayala, I hope we shall see you very often. And
remember that, as regards anything that is unpleasant, bygones shall
be bygones." Then there was a crowd of farewell kisses, and in a few
minutes Ayala was alone in the carriage on her road up to Kingsbury
Crescent.

The thing had been done so quickly that hitherto there had hardly
been time for tears. To Ayala herself the most remarkable matter in
the whole affair had been Tom's persistence. He had, at last, been
allowed to bring them home from Rome, there having been no other
gentleman whose services were available for the occasion. He had been
watched on the journey very closely, and had had no slant in his
favour, as the young lady to whom he was devoted was quite as anxious
to keep out of his way as had been the others of the party to
separate them. But he had made occasion, more than once, sufficient
to express his intention. "I don't mean to give you up, you know," he
had said to her. "When I say a thing I mean it. I am not going to be
put off by my mother. And as for the governor he would not say a word
against it if he thought we were both in earnest."

"But I ain't in earnest," said Ayala; "or rather, I am very much in
earnest."

"So am I. That's all I've got to say just at present." From this
there grew up within her mind a certain respect for the "lout,"
which, however, made him more disagreeable to her than he might have
been had he been less persistent.

It was late in the afternoon, not much before dinner, when Ayala
reached the house in Kingsbury Crescent. Hitherto she had known
almost nothing of her Aunt Dosett, and had never been intimate even
with her uncle. They, of course, had heard much of her, and had been
led to suppose that she was much less tractable than the simple Lucy.
This feeling had been so strong that Mr. Dosett himself would hardly
have been le