inclined to listen to reason.  Knowing therefore perfectly well, that he had made up his mind to marry Lucia, provided she did not deliberately prefer somebody else, he felt it useless to complicate his already confused ideas any further, by taking into consideration the expediency of such a connection.  There was quite enough to worry him without that; and by some inconceivable stupidity it never entered his head that, while he was really so completely incapable of altering his mind, other people should seriously think he was doing it.

Yet as he read Mrs. Costello’s letter over a second time, he began to perceive something in its tone which seemed to say clearly—­“Don’t flatter yourself that the matter rests at all with you.  I have decided.  I am no longer your ally, but your opponent.”  At this a new element came into play—­anger.

He had been rather unreasonable before—­now he became utterly so.  “A pretty sort of fellow she must think me, after all,” he said to himself.  “I suppose she’d be afraid to trust Lucia to me now.  However, if she thinks I mean to be beaten that way, she’ll find that she is mistaken.”

He was walking up and down his room, and working himself up into a greater ill-humour with every turn he made.

“If I could only get to Lucia herself,” he went on thinking, “I should see if I could not end the matter at once, one way or the other—­that fellow is clear out of the way now, and I believe I should have a chance; but as for Mrs. Costello, she seems to think nothing at all of throwing me over whenever it suits her.”

Poor Maurice! he sat down to write to his father in a miserable mood—­Mr. Beresford had become suddenly and decidedly worse.  The doctors said positively that he was dying, and that a few days at the utmost would bring the end.  Maurice had stolen away while he slept, but his angry meditation on Mrs. Costello’s desertion had taken up so much of his time, that Mr. Leigh’s note was short and hurried.  Ill-humour prevailed also to the point of the note being finished without any message (he had no time to write separately) to the Cottage.

His packet despatched, he returned to his grandfather’s room.  Lady Dighton, now staying in the house, sat and watched by the bedside; and by-and-by leaving her post, she joined Maurice by the window and began to talk to him in a low voice.  There was no fear of disturbing the invalid; his sleep continued, deep and lethargic, the near forerunner of death.

“Maurice,” Lady Dighton said, “I wish you would go out for an hour.  You are not really wanted here, and you look worn out.”

“Thank you, I am all right.  My grandfather might wake and miss me.”

“Go for a little while.  Half an hour’s gallop would do you good.”

Maurice laughed impatiently.

“Why should I want doing good to?  It is you, I should think, who ought to go out.”

“I was out yesterday.  Are you still anxious about your father and Canada?”