‘You shan’t say you are naughty:  I wont let you!’

Alas! it was a vain repulsion of the truth that this is a wicked world.  Gilbert only put him back, saying,

’You had better go away from me, Maurice:  you cannot understand what I have done.  Pray Heaven yon may never know what I feel!’

Maurice did but cling the tighter, and though Mr. Kendal had not yet addressed the culprit, he respected the force of that innocent love too much to interfere.  The bell rang, and they went down, Maurice still holding by his brother, and when his uncle met them, it was touching to see the generous little fellow hanging back, and not giving his own hand till he had seen Gilbert receive the ordinary greeting.

Though Mr. Ferrars had been told nothing, he could not but be aware of the symptoms of a family crisis—­the gravity of some, and the pale, jaded looks of others.  Lucy was not one of these; she came down with little Albinia in her arms, and began to talk rather airily, excusing herself for not having come down in the evening because that ‘horrid ink’ had got into her hair, and tittering a little over the absurdity of her having picked up the inkstand in the dark.  Not a word of response did she meet, and her gaiety died away in vague alarm.  Sophy, the most innocent, looked wretched, and Maurice absolutely began to cry again, at the failure of some manoeuvre to make his father speak to Gilbert.

His tears broke up the breakfast-party.  His mother led him away to reason with him, that, sad as it was, it was better that people should be grieved when they had transgressed, as the only hope of their forgiveness and improvement.  Maurice wanted her to reverse the declaration that Gilbert had done wrong; but, alas! this could not be, and she was obliged to send him out with his little sister, hoping that he would work off his grief by exercise.  It was mournful to see the first shadow of the penalty of sin falling on the Eden of his childhood!

With an aching heart, she went in search of Lucy, who had taken sanctuary in Mrs. Meadows’s room, and was not easily withdrawn from thence to a tete-a-tete.  Fearful of falsehood, Albinia began by telling her she knew all, and how little she had expected such a requital of trust.

Lucy exclaimed that it had not been her fault, she had always wanted to tell, and gradually Albinia drew from her the whole avowal, half shamefaced, half exultant.

She had never dreamt of meeting Algernon at Brighton—­it was quite by chance that she came upon him at the officers’ ball when he was staying with Captain Greenaway.  He asked her to dance, and she had said yes, all on a sudden, without thinking, and then she fancied he would go away; she begged him not to come again, but whenever she went out on the chain-pier before breakfast, there he was.