be believed by both of them that poor Lawrence had no chance, they were sad and downhearted.  In all that misery the poor attorney had the worst of it.  Mary was free from her stepmother’s zeal and her stepmother’s persecution at any rate at night; but the poor father was hardly allowed to sleep.  For Mrs. Masters never gave up her game as altogether lost.  Though she might be driven alternately into towering passion and prostrate hysterics, she would still come again to the battle.  A word of encouragement would, she said, bring Larry Twentyman back to his courtship, and that word might be spoken, if Mary’s visit to Cheltenham were forbidden.  What did the letter signify, or all the girl’s protestations?  Did not everybody know how self-willed young women were; but how they could be brought round by proper usage?  Let Mary once be made to understand that she would not be allowed to be a fine lady, and then she would marry Mr. Twentyman quick enough.  But this “Ushanting,” this journeying to Cheltenham in order that nothing might be done, was the very way to promote the disease!  This Mrs. Masters said in season and out of season, night and day, till the poor husband longed for his daughter’s departure, in order that that point might at any rate be settled.  In all these disputes he never quite yielded.  Though his heart sank within him he was still firm.  He would turn his back to his wife and let her run on with her arguments without a word of answer,—­till at last he would bounce out of bed and swear that if she did not leave him alone he would go and lock himself into the office and sleep with his head on the office desk.

Mrs. Masters was almost driven to despair;—­but at last there came to her a gleam of hope, most unexpectedly.  It had been settled that Mary should make her journey on Friday the 12th February and that Reginald Morton was again to accompany her.  This in itself was to Mrs. Masters an aggravation of the evil which was being done.  She was not in the least afraid of Reginald Morton; but this attendance on Mary was in the eyes of her stepmother a cockering of her up, a making a fine lady of her, which was in itself of all things the most pernicious.  If Mary must go to Cheltenham, why could she not go by herself, second class, like any other young woman?  “Nobody would eat her,”—­Mrs. Masters declared.  But Reginald was firm in his purpose of accompanying her.  He had no objection whatever to the second class if Mr. Masters preferred it.  But as he meant to make the journey on the same day of course they would go together.  Mr. Masters said that he was very much obliged.  Mrs. Masters protested that it was all trash from beginning to the end.