t's just fourteen hours. You wouldn't like
Docimer to come with me."

"That's nonsense. You needn't go the whole way unless you like. You
could sleep at Brunecken."

"Brunecken is only twelve miles, and it might be dangerous."

"Of course you choose to turn everything into ridicule."

"Better that than tears, Mrs. Docimer. What's the good of crying? I
can't make myself an elder son. I can't endow Imogene with a hundred
thousand pounds. She told me just now that I might earn my bread, but
she knows that I can't. It's very sad. But what can be got by being
melancholy?"

"At any rate you had better be away from her."

"I am going,--this evening. Shall I walk on, half a stage, at once,
without any dinner? I wish you had heard the kind of things she said
to me. You would not have thought that I had gone to walk with her
for my own pleasure."

"Have you not deserved them?"

"I think not;--but nevertheless I bore them. A woman, of course, can
say what she pleases. There's Docimer,--I hope he won't call me a
coward."

Mr. Docimer came out on the terrace, on which the two were standing,
looking as sour as death. "He is going by the diligence to Innspruck
this afternoon," said Mrs. Docimer.

"Why did he come? A man with a grain of feeling would have remained
away."

"Now, Docimer," said Frank, "pray do not make yourself unpleasant.
Your sister has been abusing me all the morning like a pickpocket,
and your wife looks at me as though she would say just as much if she
dared. After all, what is it I have done that you think so wicked?"

"What will everybody think at home," said Mrs. Docimer, "when they
know that you're with us again? What chance is she to have if you
follow her about in this way?"

"I shall not follow her very long," said Frank. "My wings will soon
be cut, and then I shall never fly again." They were at this time
walking up and down the terrace together, and it seemed for awhile
that neither of them had another word to say in the matter of the
dispute between them. Then Houston went on again in his own defence.
"Of course it is all bad," he said. "Of course we have all been
fools. You knew it, and allowed it; and have no right to say a word
to me."

"We thought that when your uncle died there would have been money,"
said Docimer, with a subdued growl.

"Exactly; and so did I. You do not mean to say that I deceived either
you or her?"

"There should have been an end of it when that hope was ove