‘Don’t be too hard on cockiness,’ said Lord Rotherwood, who had come up to them, ’there must be consciousness of powers.  How are you to fly, if you mustn’t flap your wings and crow a little?’

‘On a les defauts de ses qualites,’ put in Lady Merrifield.

‘Yes,’ added Mr. Underwood.  ’It is quite true that needful self-assertion and originality, and sense of the evils around—–­’

‘Which the old folk have outgrown and got used to,’ said Lord Rotherwood.

‘May be condemned as conceit,’ concluded Mr. Underwood.

’Ay, exactly as Eliab knew David’s pride and the naughtiness of his heart,’ said Lord Rotherwood.  ’If you won’t fight your giant yourself, you’ve no business to condemn those who feel it in them to go at him.’

’Ah! we have got to the condemnation of others, instead of the exaltation of self,’ said Lady Merrifield.

’It is better to cultivate humility in one’s self than other people, eh?’ said the Marquis, and his cousin thought, though she did not say, that he was really the most humble and unself-conscious man she had ever known.  What she did say was, ’It is a plant that grows best uncultivated.’

‘And if you have it not by happy nature, what then?’ said Clement Underwood.

’Then I suppose you must plant it, and there will be plenty of tears of repentance to water it,’ returned she.

‘Thank you,’ said Clement.  ‘That is an idea to work upon.’

‘All very fine!’ sighed Gillian to Mysie, ’but oh, how about Alexis in prison!  There’s papa, now he has got rid of Fangs, actually going to walk off with Uncle Sam, and mamma has let Lady Rotherwood get hold of her.  Will no-body care for anybody?’

‘I think I would trust papa,’ said Mysie.

He was not long gone, and when he came back he said, ’You may give me that letter, Gillian.  I posted a card to tell your aunt she should hear to-morrow.’

All that Gillian could say to her mother in private that evening consisted of, ‘Oh, mamma, mamma,’ but the answer was, ’I have heard about it from papa, my dear; I am glad you told him.  He is thinking what to do.  Be patient.’

Externally, awe and good manners forced Gillian to behave herself; but internally she was so far from patient, and had so many bitter feelings of indignation, that she felt deeply rebuked when she came down next morning to find her father hurrying through his breakfast, with a cab ordered to convey him to the station, on his way to see what could be done for Alexis White.

That day Gillian had her confidential talk with her mother—–­a talk that she never forgot, trying to dig to the roots of her failures in a manner that only the true mother-confessor of her own child can perhaps have patience and skill for, and that only when she has studied the creature from babyhood.  The concatenation, ending (if it was so to end) in the committal to Avoncester Jail, and beginning with the interview over the rails, had to be traced link by link, and was almost as long as ‘the house that Jack built.’