Bernard offered to his aunt what of solace and sympathy he had to offer, and made some sort of half-expressed apology for having introduced this wolf into their flock.  “We always thought very much of him at his club,” said Bernard.

“I don’t know much about your London clubs nowadays,” said his uncle, “nor do I wish to do so if the society of that man can be endured after what he has now done.”

“I don’t suppose half-a-dozen men will ever know anything about it,” said Bernard.

“Umph!” ejaculated the squire.  He could not say that he wished Crosbie’s villainy to be widely discussed, seeing that Lily’s name was so closely connected with it.  But yet he could not support the idea that Crosbie should not be punished by the frown of the world at large.  It seemed to him that from this time forward any man speaking to Crosbie should be held to have disgraced himself by so doing.

“Give her my best love,” he said, as Mrs Dale got up to take her leave; “my very best love.  If her old uncle can do anything for her she has only to let me know.  She met the man in my house, and I feel that I owe her much.  Bid her come and see me.  It will be better for her than moping at home.  And Mary”—­this he said to her, whispering into her ear—­“think of what I said to you about Bell.”

Mrs Dale, as she walked back to her own house, acknowledged to herself that her brother-in-law’s manner was different to her from anything that she had hitherto known of him.

During the whole of that day Crosbie’s name was not mentioned at the Small House.  Neither of the girls stirred out, and Bell spent the greater part of the afternoon sitting, with her arm round her sister’s waist, upon the sofa.  Each of them had a book; but though there was little spoken, there was as little read.  Who can describe the thoughts that were passing through Lily’s mind as she remembered the hours which she had passed with Crosbie, of his warm assurances of love, of his accepted caresses, of her uncontrolled and acknowledged joy in his affection?  It had all been holy to her then; and now those things which were then sacred had been made almost disgraceful by his fault.  And yet as she thought of this she declared to herself over and over again that she would forgive him;—­nay, that she had forgiven him.  “And he shall know it, too,” she said, speaking almost out loud.

“Lily, dear Lily,” said Bell, “turn your thoughts away from it for a while, if you can.”

“They won’t go away,” said Lily.  And that was all that was said between them on the subject.

Everybody would know it!  I doubt whether that must not be one of the bitterest drops in the cup which a girl in such circumstances is made to drain.  Lily perceived early in the day that the parlour-maid well knew that she had been jilted.  The girl’s manner was intended to convey sympathy; but it did convey pity; and Lily for a moment felt angry.  But she remembered that it must be so, and smiled upon the girl, and spoke kindly to her.  What mattered it?  All the world would know it in a day or two.