ittle raised, "Now, papa, I must write
to him."

"My darling, my dearest," said the Dean, leaning over and kissing her
with more than his usual demonstration of love.

"I may write now."

"Yes, dear, you should certainly tell him that." Then the Dean went out
and walked round the deanery garden, and the cathedral cloisters, and
the close, assuring himself that after a very little while the real
Lord Popenjoy would be his own grandson.

CHAPTER XLV.

LADY GEORGE AT THE DEANERY.

It took Mary a long long morning,--not altogether an unhappy
morning,--to write her letter to her husband. She was forced to make
many attempts before she could tell the great news in a fitting way,
and even when the telling was done she was very far from being
satisfied with the manner of it. There should have been no necessity
that such tidings should be told by letter. It was cruel, very cruel,
that such a moment should not have been made happy to her by his joy.
The whisper made to her father should have been made to him,--but that
things had gone so untowardly with her. And then, in her present
circumstances, she could not devote her letter to the one event. She
must refer to the said subject of their separation. "Dear, dearest
George, pray do not think of quarrelling with me," she said twice over
in her letter. The letter did get itself finished at last, and the
groom was sent over with it on horseback.

What answer would he make to her? Would he be very happy? would he be
happy enough to forgive her at once and come and stay with her at the
deanery? or would the importance of the moment make him more imperious
than ever in commanding that she should go with him to Cross Hall. If
he did command her now she thought that she must go. Then she sat
meditating what would be the circumstances of her life there,--how
absolutely she would be trodden upon; how powerless she would be to
resist those Dorcas conclaves after her mutiny and subsequent
submission! Though she could not quite guess, she could nearly guess
what bad things had been said of her; and the ladies at Cross Hall
were, as she understood, now in amity with him who had said them. They
had believed evil of her, and of course, therefore, in going to Cross
Hall, she would go to it as to a reformatory. But the deanery would be
to her a paradise if only her husband would but come to her there. It
was not only that she was mistress of everything, including her own
time, bu