‘Oh, Mary, how I have wanted you!  You believe in me now!’

‘I am sure mamma would!’ murmured Mary.

He could have poured forth a torrent of affection, but the suspicion of a footstep made her start from him; and the next moment she was herself, glowing, indeed, and half crying with happiness, but alarmed at her own agitation, and struggling to resume her common-place manner.

‘There’s your father not had a morsel of breakfast!’ she exclaimed, hurrying back to her teacups, whose ringing betrayed her trembling hand.  ‘Call him, Louis.’

‘Must I go?’ said Louis, coming to assist in a manner that threatened deluge and destruction.

‘Oh yes, go!  I shall be able to speak to you when you come back.’

He had only to go into the verandah.  His father was watching at the library window, and they wrung each other’s hand in gladness beyond utterance.

Mary had seated herself in the solid stately chair, with the whole entrenchment of tea equipage before her.  They knew it signified that she was to be unmolested; they took their places, and the Earl carved ham, and Louis cut bread, and Mary poured out tea in the most matter-of-fact manner, hazarding nothing beyond such questions as, ’May I give you an egg?’

Then curiosity began to revive:  Louis ventured, ‘Where did you land?’ and his father made answer, ‘At Liverpool, yesterday,’ and how the Custom-house had detained them, and he had, therefore, brought Mary straight home, instead of stopping with her at Northwold, at eleven o’clock, to disturb Mrs. Frost.

‘You would have found us up,’ said Louis.

‘You were sleeping at the Terrace?’

‘Yes, I walked here this morning.’

‘Then your ankle must be pretty well,’ was Mary’s first contribution to the conversation.

‘Quite well for all useful purposes,’ said Louis, availing himself of the implied permission to turn towards her.

‘But, Louis,’ suddenly exclaimed the Earl, ’did you not tell me something extraordinary about James Frost?  Whom did you say he was going to marry?’

‘Isabel Conway.’

Never was his love of electrifying more fully gratified!  Lord Ormersfield was surprised into an emphatic interjection, and inquiry whether they were all gone mad.

‘Not that I am aware of,’ said Louis.  ’Perhaps you have not heard that Mr. Lester is going to retire, and Jem has the school?’

’Then, it must be Calcott and the trustees who are out of their senses.’

‘Do you not consider it an excellent appointment?’

‘It might be so some years hence,’ said the Earl.  ’I am afraid it will tie him down to a aecond-rate affair, when he might be doing better; and the choice is the last thing I should have expected from Calcott.’

’He opposed it.  He wanted to bring in a very ordinary style of person, from —­ School, but Jem’s superiority and the general esteem for my aunt carried the day.’