Miss Frost was not a person to be rejected, and in another week she found herself setting out to breakfast with a girl and three boys, infusing Latin, French, and geography all the forenoon, dining with them, sometimes walking with them, and then returning to the merry evening of Dynevor Terrace.

Mr. Dynevor endured the step pretty well.  She had ascendancy enough over him always to take her own way, and he was still buoyed up by the hope of recovering enough to rectify his affairs in Peru.  He was better, though his right side remained paralysed, and Mr. Walby saw little chance of restoration.  Rising late, and breakfasting slowly, the newspaper and visits from James wiled away the morning.  He preferred taking his meals alone; and after dinner was wheeled out in a chair on fine days.  Clara came to him as soon as her day’s work was over; and, when he was well enough to bear it, the whole party were with him from the children’s bedtime till his own.  Altogether, the invalid-life passed off pretty well.  He did not dislike the children, and Kitty liked anything that needed to be waited on.  He took Clara’s services as a right, but was a little afraid of ’Mrs. Dynevor,’ and highly flattered by any attention from her; and with James his moods were exceedingly variable, and often very trying, but, in general, very well endured.

Peruvian mails were anticipated in the family with a feeling most akin to dread.  The notice of a vessel coming in was the signal for growlings at everything, from the post-office down to his dinner; and the arrival of letters made things only worse.  As Clara said, the galleons were taken by the pirates; the Equatorial Company seemed to be doing the work of Caleb Balderston’s thunderstorm, and to be bearing the blame of a deficit such as Oliver could not charge on it.  The whole statement was backed by Mr. Ponsonby, whose short notes spoke of indisposition making him more indebted than ever to the exertions of Robson.  This last was gone to Guayaquil to attempt to clear up the accounts of the Equatorial Company, leaving the office at Lima in the charge of Madison and the new clerk, Ford; and Mr. Dynevor was promised something decisive and satisfactory on his return.  Of Mary there was no mention, except what might be inferred in a postscript:—­’Ward is expected in a few weeks.’

Mr. Dynevor was obliged to resign himself; and so exceedingly fractious was he, that Clara had been feeling quite dispirited, when her brother called her to tell her joyously that Lord Ormersfield and Louis were coming home, and would call in on their way the next evening.  Those wretched children must not take her for a walk.

Nevertheless, the wretched children did want to walk, and Clara could not get home till half-an-hour after she knew the train must have come in; and she found the visitors in her uncle’s room.  Louis came forward to the door to meet her, and shook her hand with all his heart, saying, under his breath,