“What will be the result, do you suppose?” I asked.

“I can’t tell.  Sooner or later she will have to give in to her mother.  Everybody does.  She might as well yield with a good grace.”

“She must do what she thinks right,” I said.  “And you, Mr Stoddart, ought to help her to do what is right.  You surely would not urge her to marry a man she did not love.”

“Well, no; not exactly urge her.  And yet society does not object to it.  It is an acknowledged arrangement, common enough.”

“Society is scarcely an interpreter of the divine will.  Society will honour vile things enough, so long as the doer has money sufficient to clothe them in a grace not their own.  There is a God’s-way of doing everything in the world, up to marrying, or down to paying a bill.”

“Yes, yes, I know what you would say; and I suppose you are right.  I will not urge any opinion of mine.  Besides, we shall have a little respite soon, for he must join his regiment in a day or two.”

It was some relief to hear this.  But I could not with equanimity prosecute a conversation having Miss Oldcastle for the subject of it, and presently took my leave.

As I walked through one of the long passages, but dimly lighted, leading from Mr Stoddart’s apartment to the great staircase, I started at a light touch on my arm.  It was from Judy’s hand.

“Dear Mr Walton——­” she said, and stopped.

For at the same moment appeared at the farther end of the passage towards which I had been advancing, a figure of which little more than a white face was visible; and the voice of Sarah, through whose softness always ran a harsh thread that made it unmistakable, said,

“Miss Judy, your grandmamma wants you.”

Judy took her hand from my arm, and with an almost martial stride the little creature walked up to the speaker, and stood before her defiantly.  I could see them quite well in the fuller light at the end of the passage, where there stood a lamp.  I followed slowly that I might not interrupt the child’s behaviour, which moved me strangely in contrast with the pusillanimity I had so lately witnessed in Mr Stoddart.

“Sarah,” she said, “you know you are telling a lie Grannie does not want me.  You have not been in the dining-room since I left it one moment ago.  Do you think, you bad woman, I am going to be afraid of you?  I know you better than you think.  Go away directly, or I will make you.”

She stamped her little foot, and the “white wolf” turned and walked away without a word.