good."

"It was very good of your father," Lord George repeated,--"very good
indeed; but it cannot be. A married woman should live in her husband's
house and not in her father's."

Mary gazed into his face with a perplexed look, not quite understanding
the whole question, but still with a clear idea as to a part of it. All
that might be very true, but if a husband didn't happen to have a house
then might not the wife's father's house be a convenience? They had
indeed a house, provided no doubt with her money, but not the less now
belonging to her husband, in which she would be very willing to live if
he pleased it,--the house in Munster Court. It was her husband that
made objection to their own house. It was her husband who wished to
live near Manor Cross, not having a roof of his own under which to do
so. Were not these circumstances which ought to have made the deanery a
convenience to him? "Then what will you do?" she asked.

"I cannot say as yet." He had become again gloomy and black-browed.

"Wouldn't you come here--for a week?"

"I think not, my dear."

"Not when you know how happy it would make me to have you with me once
again. I do so long to be telling you everything." Then she leant
against him and embraced him, and implored him to grant her this
favour. But he would not yield. He had told himself that the Dean had
interfered between him and his wife, and that he must at any rate go
through the ceremony of taking his wife away from her father. Let it be
accorded to him that he had done that, and then perhaps he might visit
the deanery. As for her, she would have gone with him anywhere now,
having fully established her right to visit her father after leaving
London.

There was nothing further settled, and very little more said, when Lord
George left the deanery and started back to Manor Cross. But with Mary
there had been left a certain comfort. The shopkeepers and Dr. Pountner
had seen her with her husband, and Mr. Groschut had met Lord George at
the deanery door.

CHAPTER L.

RUDHAM PARK.

Lord George had undertaken to leave Manor Cross by the middle of
August, but when the first week of that month had passed away he had
not as yet made up his mind what he would do with himself. Mr. Knox had
told him that should he remain with his mother the Marquis would not,
as Mr. Knox thought, take further notice of the matter; but on such
terms as these he could not consent to live in his brother's