Lady Latimer, on her way to depart, came near the place where the gentlemen were grouped, and turned aside to join them, as if a sudden thought had struck her.  “You are discussing our plans?” she said.  “A certificated master to supersede poor old Rivett must be the first consideration in our rearrangement of the schools.  The children have been sacrificed too long to his incompetence.  We must be on the look-out for a superior man, and make up our minds to pay him well.”

“Poor old Rivett! he has done good work in his day, but he has the fault that overtakes all of us in time,” said Mr. Phipps.  “For the master of a rural school like ours, I would choose just such another man—­of rough common-sense, born and bred in a cottage, and with an experimental knowledge of the life of the boys he has to educate.  Certificated if you please, but the less conventionalized the better.”

Lady Latimer did not like Mr. Phipps—­she thought there was something of the spy in his nature.  She gazed beyond him, and was peremptory about her superior man—­so peremptory that she had probably already fixed on the fortunate individual who would enjoy her countenance.  Half an hour later, when Bessie Fairfax was carrying off her reluctant brothers to supper and to bed, my lady had not said all she had to say.  She was still projecting, dissenting, deciding and undoing, and the gentlemen were still listening with patient deference.  She had made magnificent offers of help for the furtherance of their schemes, and had received warm acknowledgments.

“Her ladyship is bountiful as usual—­for a consideration,” said Mr. Phipps, emitting a long suppressed groan of weariness, when her gracious good-evening released them.  Mr. Phipps revolted against my lady’s yoke, the others wore it with grace.  Admiral Parkins said Beechhurst would be in a poor way without her.  Mr. Musgrave looked at his watch, and avowed the same opinion.  Mr. Carnegie said nothing.  He knew so much good of Lady Latimer that he had an almost unlimited indulgence for her.  It was his disposition, indeed, to be indulgent to women, to give them all the homage and sympathy they require.

Mr. Phipps and Mr. Carnegie quitted the rectory-garden, and crossed the road to the doctor’s house in company.  Bessie Fairfax, worn out with the emotions and fatigues of the day, had left the children to their mother and stout Irish nurse, and had collapsed into her father’s great chair in the parlor.  She sprang up as the gentlemen entered, and was about to run away, when Mr. Phipps spread out his arms to arrest her flight.

“Well, Cinderella, the pumpkin-coach has not come yet to fetch you away?” said he.  The application of the parable of Cinderella to her case was Mr. Phipps’s favorite joke against Bessie Fairfax.

“No, but it is on the road.  I hear the roll of the wheels and the crack of Raton’s whip,” said she with a prodigious sigh.

“So it is, Phipps—­that’s true!  We are going to lose our Bessie,” said Mr. Carnegie, drawing her upon his knee as he sat down.