main with her."

"Certainly not;--certainly not."

"She will not go. She shall not be made to run away. Though everything
have to be told in the public prints, I will not submit to that. I
suppose you do not dare to tell me that you suspect her of any evil?"

"She has been indiscreet."

"Suppose I granted that,--which I don't,--is she to be ground into dust
in this way for indiscretion? Have not you been indiscreet?" Lord
George made no direct answer to this question, fearing that the Dean
had heard the story of the love-letter; but of that matter the Dean had
heard nothing. "In all your dealings with her, can you tax yourself
with no deviation from wisdom?"

"What a man does is different. No conduct of mine can blemish her
name."

"But it may destroy her happiness,--and if you go on in this way it
will do so."

During the whole of that day the matter was discussed. Lord George
obstinately insisted on taking his wife down to Cross Hall, if not on
the next day, then on the day after. But the Dean, and with the Dean
the young wife, positively refused to accede to this arrangement. The
Dean had his things brought from the inn to the house in Munster Court,
and though he did not absolutely declare that he had come there for his
daughter's protection, it was clear that this was intended. In such an
emergency Lord George knew not what to do. Though the quarrel was
already very bitter, he could not quite tell his father-in-law to leave
the house; and then there was always present to his mind a feeling that
the Dean had a right to be there in accordance with the pecuniary
arrangement made. The Dean would have been welcome to the use of the
house and all that was in it, if only Mary would have consented to be
taken at once down to Cross Hall. But being under her father's wing,
she would not consent. She pleaded that by going at once, or running
away as she called it, she would own that she had done something wrong,
and she was earnest in declaring that nothing should wring such a
confession from her. Everybody, she said, knew that she was to stay in
London to the end of June. Everybody knew that she was then to go to
the Deanery. It was not to be borne that people should say that her
plans had been altered because she had danced the Kappa-kappa with
Captain De Baron. She must see her friends before she went, or else her
friends would know that she had been carried into banishment. In answer
to this, Lord George declared