‘Not the end, I hope,’ said Miss Mohun.  ’It is not exactly slavery without redemption.’

‘He does not deserve it.’

‘Who does?  Besides, remember what his father was.’

’His father must have been of the high-spirited, dare-devil sort.  This lad was made for a scholar—–­for the priesthood, in fact, and the army will be more uncongenial than these marble works!  Foolish fellow, he will soon have had enough of it, with his refinement, among such associates.’

Jane wondered that the young clergyman did not regret that he had sufficiently tried the youth’s patience to give the sense of neglect and oblivion.  There had been many factors in the catastrophe, and this had certainly been one, since the loan of a few books, and an hour a week of direction of study, would have kept Alexis contented, and have obviated all the perilous intercourse with Gillian; but she scarcely did the Rev. Augustine Flight injustice in thinking that in the aesthetic and the emotional side of religion he somewhat lost sight of the daily drudgery that works on character chiefly as a preventive.  ‘He was at the bottom of it, little as he knows it,’ she said to herself as she walked up the hill.  ’How much harm is done by good beginnings of a skein left to tangle.’

Lady Flight provided a trained nurse to help Kalliope, and sent hosts of delicacies; and plenty of abuse was bestowed on Mr. James White for his neglect.  Meanwhile Mrs. White, though manifestly in a hopeless state, seemed likely to linger on for some weeks longer.

In the meantime, Miss Mohun at last found an available house, and was gratified by the young people’s murmur that ‘Il Lido’ was too far off from Beechcroft.  But then their mother would be glad to be so near St. Andrew’s, for she belonged to the generation that loved and valued daily services.

Lord Rotherwood, perhaps owing to his exertions, felt the accident more than he had done at first, and had to be kept very quiet, which he averred to be best accomplished by having the children in to play with him; and as he always insisted on sending for Valetta to make up the party, the edict of separation fell to the ground, when Lady Rotherwood, having written his letters for him, went out for a drive, taking sometimes Miss Elbury, but more often Adeline Mohun, who flattered herself that her representations had done much to subdue prejudice and smooth matters.

‘Which always were smooth,’ said Jane; ’smooth and polished as a mahogany table, and as easy to get into.’

However, she was quite content that Ada should be the preferred one, and perhaps no one less acute than herself would have felt that the treatment as intimates and as part of the family was part of the duty of a model wife.  Both sisters were in request to enliven the captive, and Jane forebore to worry him with her own anxieties about the present disgrace of the Whites.  Nothing could be done for Kalliope