Eames did not attempt to keep him, but went away feeling that the whole matter was being arranged for him in a very wonderful way.  And when he got to Allington he found that the squire had accepted the earl’s invitation.  Then he declared to himself that there was no longer any possibility of retractation for him.  Of course he did not wish to retract.  The one great longing of his life was to call Lily Dale his own.  But he felt afraid of the squire,—­that the squire would despise him and snub him, and that the earl would perceive that he had made a mistake when he saw how his client was scorned and snubbed.  It was arranged that the earl was to take the squire into his own room for a few minutes before dinner, and Johnny felt that he would be hardly able to stand his ground in the drawing-room when the two old men should make their appearance together.

He got on very well with Lady Julia, who gave herself no airs, and made herself very civil.  Her brother had told her the whole story, and she felt as anxious as he did to provide Lily with another husband in place of that horrible man Crosbie.  “She has been very fortunate in her escape,” she said to her brother; “very fortunate.”  The earl agreed with this, saying that in his opinion his own favourite Johnny would make much the nicer lover of the two.  But Lady Julia had her doubts as to Lily’s acquiescence.  “But, Theodore, he must not speak to Miss Lilian Dale herself about it yet a while.”

“No,” said the earl, “not for a month or so.”

“He will have a better chance if he can remain silent for six months,” said Lady Julia.

“Bless my soul! somebody else will have picked her up before that,” said the earl.

In answer to this Lady Julia merely shook her head.

Johnny went over to his mother on Christmas Day after church, and was received by her and by his sister with great honour.  And she gave him many injunctions as to his behaviour at the earl’s table, even descending to small details about his boots and linen.  But Johnny had already begun to feel at the Manor that, after all, people are not so very different in their ways of life as they are supposed to be.  Lady Julia’s manners were certainly not quite those of Mrs Roper; but she made the tea very much in the way in which it was made at Burton Crescent, and Eames found that he could eat his egg, at any rate on the second morning, without any tremor in his hand, in spite of the coronet on the silver egg-cup.  He did feel himself to be rather out of his place in the Manor pew on the Sunday, conceiving that all the congregation was looking at him; but he got over this on Christmas Day, and sat quite comfortably in his soft corner during the sermon, almost going to sleep.  And when he walked with the earl after church to the gate over which the noble peer had climbed in his agony, and inspected the hedge through which he had thrown himself, he was quite at home with his little jokes, bantering his august companion as to