“It is impossible.  I have promised for Saturday, and must keep the appointment,” and Burton Jerrold leisurely scraped and trimmed his thumb nail, but did not explain that the appointment he must keep was with the members of his club, who gave a dinner on Saturday.

He knew very well that he could remain in Allington until Saturday afternoon and then reach home in time for the dinner; but the place was almost as distasteful to him as to his wife, and he gladly seized upon any pretext to shorten his stay as much as possible.

“Shall I tell father that you will come with Burton to-morrow?” Hannah asked her sister, who instantly assumed that air of invalidism which she found so convenient when anything disagreeable was suggested for her to do.

Drawing her shawl more closely about her, and glancing with a little shiver at the window, she replied: 

“N-no, I hardly think I shall go out to-morrow, it will be so cold, and probably stormy; but you may expect me for a little while on Saturday, if the day is fine.”

“But I shall come and stay till Monday, and I hope you have a lot of mince pies baked up.  Last Thanksgiving we were in Paris, and had pea soup, and brains, and eels, and stewed celery for dinner,” Grey said, as he kissed his aunt and bade her good-by.

CHAPTER VIII.

AFTER THE DINNER.

The carriage which took Hannah home also took Miss McPherson to the door of her dwelling, a large, old-fashioned New England house, with a wide hall through the center, and a square room on either side; one the drawing-room or parlor in which the massive furniture had not been changed during the twenty years and more that Miss Betsey had lived there; the other the living room where the lady sat, and ate, and received her friends and where now a bright fire was burning in the Franklin stove, and the kettle was singing upon the hob, while a little round Swiss table was standing on the Persian rug before the fire, and on it the delicate cup and saucer, and sugar bowl, and creamer, which Miss McPherson had herself bought at Sevres years ago, when the life she looked forward to was very different from what had actually come to her.  Possibly the memory of the day when she walked through those brilliant rooms at Sevres, and bought her costly wares, softened a little her somewhat harsh, uncompromising nature, for there was a very womanly expression on her usually severe face as she sipped her favorite oolong, and gazed dreamily into the fire, where she seemed to see again the sweet face of the child who had talked to her on the shores of Cardigan Bay, and whose innocent prattle had by turns amused, and interested, and enraged her.  And, as she gazed she thought: