‘All I beg of you is,’ said Lady Jocelyn, ’that you won’t let us have turnips within the circuit of a mile’; which was obligingly promised.

The morning letters were delivered and opened with the customary calmness.

‘Letter from old George,’ Harry sings out, and buzzes over a few lines.  ‘Halloa!—­Hum!’ He was going to make a communication, but catching sight of Caroline, tossed the letter over to Ferdinand, who read it and tossed it back with the comment of a careless face.

‘Read it, Rosey?’ says Harry, smiling bluntly.

Rather to his surprise, Rose took the letter.  Study her eyes if you wish to gauge the potency of one strong dose of ridicule on an ingenuous young heart.  She read that Mr. George Uplift had met ‘our friend Mr. Snip’ riding, by moonlight, on the road to Beckley.  That great orbed night of their deep tender love flashed luminously through her frame, storming at the base epithet by which her lover was mentioned, flooding grandly over the ignominies cast on him by the world.  She met the world, as it were, in a death-grapple; she matched the living heroic youth she felt him to be, with that dead wooden image of him which it thrust before her.  Her heart stood up singing like a craven who sees the tide of victory setting toward him.  But this passed beneath her eyelids.  When her eyes were lifted, Ferdinand could have discovered nothing in them to complain of, had his suspicions been light to raise:  nor could Mrs. Shorne perceive that there was the opening for a shrewd bodkin-thrust.  Rose had got a mask at last:  her colour, voice, expression, were perfectly at command.  She knew it to be a cowardice to wear any mask:  but she had been burnt, horribly burnt:  how much so you may guess from the supple dissimulation of such a bold clear-visaged girl.  She conquered the sneers of the world in her soul:  but her sensitive skin was yet alive to the pangs of the scorching it had been subjected to when weak, helpless, and betrayed by Evan, she stood with no philosophic parent to cry fair play for her, among the skilful torturers of Elburne House.

Sir Franks had risen and walked to the window.

‘News?’ said Lady Jocelyn, wheeling round in her chair.

The one eyebrow up of the easy-going baronet signified trouble of mind.  He finished his third perusal of a letter that appeared to be written in a remarkably plain legal hand, and looking as men do when their intelligences are just equal to the comprehension or expression of an oath, handed the letter to his wife, and observed that he should be found in the library.  Nevertheless he waited first to mark its effect on Lady Jocelyn.  At one part of the document her forehead wrinkled slightly.

‘Doesn’t sound like a joke!’ he said.

She answered: 

‘No.’

Sir Franks, apparently quite satisfied by her ready response, turned on his heel and left the room quickly.