that. Hugh certainly is tant soit peu
bourgeois."

"Oh, I thought, Aunt Hilda—we all
thought at Lowater House— that Mr.
Lockwood was thoroughly a gentleman."

"Well, I'm delighted to hear it. I
fancied you were turning up your nose at
him a little. How flushed you are, child!
Let me feel your forehead. No; there's
no appearance of fever. And now the
colour is fading away again. I shall send
you to bed at nine o'clock—not a moment
later."

"Very well, Aunt Hilda. But you were
saying—that—that Mrs. Lockwood—- "

"Oh, to be sure! Yes; let me see.
Mrs. Lockwood—- Oh, now I have it! I
was saying that she is so unlike her son,
wasn't I? Well, she is. He is, as I said,
a strapping robust-looking creature. I
suppose he inherits his burliness from his
peasant ancestors. His father's father, you
know, was—- Ah! you do know all about
it? Yes—- quite rustics. And Hugh is
not in the least ashamed of his grandfather."

"Ashamed! Why should he be ashamed?"

"Well, my dear, if you come to that,
why should we be proud of our ancestors?
Upon my word, I don't know. Still, there
is a kind of feeling. However, Hugh is
too manly and upright for any mean
pretensions, and I quite respect him for it.
But as to his mother, she is the tiniest fairy
of a woman you ever saw in all your days.
She really is more like one of the 'good
people' that our old nurse at Delaney used
to tell us about, than anything else— in
size, I mean—for there is nothing fantastic
about her."

"I am sure to like her for her kindness
to you, Aunt Hilda."

"Indeed, she is very kind.  And so
thoughtful! and has such good manners!
She came every day while you were in
bed, and inquired about you. But she
never intrudes. But I thought of asking
her to take tea with us quietly some evening,
if you don't mind. For now her son
is not at home, she is lonely too. And
before I had you, Maudie, I was very glad
of Mrs. Lockwood's company."

Maud, of course, begged that her aunt
would invite Mrs. Lockwood as often as
she chose. But in truth she shrank from
the sight of a stranger. There was no hour
of the day when Veronica was absent from
her thoughts. There had been no preparation
for the terrific blow that had fallen.
She had bade Veronica farewell that night
at Lowater House, with no faintest
foreshadowing of what was to come. She
tormented herself sometimes with the idea
that if she (Maud) had returned to the
vicarage and remained with Veronica, the
evil would not have happened. There were
moments when she longed, with a painfully
intense longing, to set forth to follow the
unhappy girl, to find her, and bring her
back, and soothe and cherish her, and
shelter her among them again. She could
not understand that her guardian should
abandon his daughter without an effort.
Then the doubt arose whether Veronica
herself would consent to return.

"If I could go to her, see her, and
persuade her, she would come back; she
would leave that dreadful man. She cannot
care for him—- '"

So ran her thoughts. And then the
remembrance would startle her like a sudden
blow, that the man was the husband
of her mother's sister; and she would hide
her face in her trembling hands and shudder
with a confused sensation of terror.

She was spared the spectacle of any
acute suffering on the part of her aunt.

Lady Tallis made no pretensions to
outraged wifely affection. All such sentiment
had been killed in her long years ago. But
there was a curious phase of feeling—
the last faint protest of her trampled
self-respect—the one drop of gall in her
submissive nature—which made her regard
Veronica with something as near rancour
as could be entertained by a character so
flavourless, meek, and weak.

Maud shrank with instinctive delicacy
from any mention of Veronica to the wife
of Sir John Gale. But her aunt had voluntarily
spoken of the vicar's daughter on
one or two occasions; and had mentioned
her in terms that caused Maud the most
exquisite pain. The relations of the latter
to all concerned in this misery and shame,
were peculiarly complicated and delicate.
And the sorrowing girl strove to hide
her grief. Maud's was still the same
nature which had caused Mrs. Levincourt
to characterise her as "stolid" and "unfeeling,"
when she had suppressed her
childish tears at sight of the strange faces
in her new home. Mrs. Levincourt never
knew that the pillow in the little crib had
been wetted that first night with bitter,
but silent tears. Maud could bear the
pain of her wound, but she could not bear
that it should be approached by a coarse or
unsympathising touch.

For all these reasons, and from the knowledge