“No, no, I’ll put myself to bed!”

“Come, sir, please do, like a good boy—­Master Pinney won’t go without you, and I must put him to bed while they are dishing up.  Come, sir, I’ve got a mince-pie for you.”

“And some oysters—­Bobby said I should have some oysters!”

“Yes, yes; come along, sir.”

And Master Ducky submitted to his fate, while Julius looked his wonder, and asked, “Is he nursery-maid?”

“Just now, since the bonne went,” said Lenore.  “He is a most faithful, attached servant, who will do anything for them. She does attach people deeply when the first shock is over.”

“I am coming to believe so,” he answered.  “There seem to me to be excellent elements.”

“I am so glad!” said Lenore; “she is so thorough, so true and frank; and much of this oddness is really an inconsistent struggle to keep out of debt.”

“Well! at any rate I am thankful to her for this opportunity of seeing you,” said Julius.  “We have both been longing to speak our welcome to you.”

“Thank you.  It is so kind,” she fervently whispered; “all the kinder for the state of things that is insisted on—­though you know that it can make no real difference,” she added, apparently addressing the goldfish.

“Frank knows it,” said Julius, in a low voice.

“I trust he does, though I cannot see him to assure him—­you will?” she added, looking up at him with a shy brightness in her eye and a flush on her cheek.

“Yes, indeed!” he said, laying his hand on hers for a moment.  “I fear you may both have much to pull through, but I think you are of a steadfast nature.”

“I hope so—­I think I am, for none of my feelings seem to me ever to change, except that I get harder, and, I am afraid, bitterer.”

“I can understand your feeling that form of trial.”

“Oh, if you could, and would help me!”

“As a brother; if I may.”

Again she laid a hand on his, saying, “I have longed to talk openly to you ever since we met in the cow-shed; but I could not make any advance to any of you, because,” she whispered in haste, “I thought it my duty to hold back from Frank.  And now, till we go away, Camilla watches me and occupies me every minute, will not even let me ride out with papa.  I wonder she lets me talk to you now.”

“We know each other,” said Julius, shortly.

It was so.  Once, in the plain-spoken days of childhood, Miles and Julius had detected Camilla Vivian in some flagrant cheating at a game, and had roundly expressed their opinion.  In the subsequent period of Raymond’s courtship, Miles had succumbed to the fascination, but Julius had given one such foil, that she had never again attempted to cajole him.

“I have seen that you did from the first,” said Lenore.  “And it would make it much easier to talk to you than to any outsider, who would never understand, even if it were possible for me to explain, how hard it is to see which way my duty lies—­especially filial.”