Part 54 (1/2)

'Evidently flattered!' muttered Aunt Jane, between her teeth, and unheard; but the speed slackened, and Constance's voice went on,

'I really thought I should have died of it on the spot. The bare idea of thinking I could endure such a being.'

'Well,' said Dolores, just as the clatter ceased at a little station.

'You know you did walk up and down with him ever so long, and I am sure you liked him very much.'

An indignant 'You don't understand' was absolutely cut off by an imperative grasp and hush from Miss Hacket the elder; Aunt Jane was suffocating with laughter, Lady Merrifield, between that and a certain shame for womanhood, which made her begin to talk at random about anything or everything else.

CHAPTER XXII. -- NAY.

'What a mull they have made of it!' were Mr. Maurice Mohun's first words when he found the compartment free for a tete-a-tete with his brother.

'All's well that ends well,' was the brief reply.

'Well, indeed! Mary would not have thought so.' To which the colonel had nothing to say.

'It serves me out,' his brother went on presently. 'I ought to have done something for that wretched fellow before I went, or, at any rate, have put Dolly on her guard; but I always s.h.i.+rked the very thought of him.'

'Nothing would have kept him out of harm's way.'

'It might have kept the child; but she must have been thicker with him than I ever knew. However I shall have her with me for the future, and in better hands.'

'You really mean to take her out?'

'That's what brought me home. She isn't happy; that is plain from her letters; and Jane does not know what to make of her, nor Lilias either.'

'When were your last letters dated?'

'The last week in September.'

'Early days,' muttered the colonel.

'I thought it an experiment, you know; but you said so much about Lily's girls being patterns, that I thought Jasper Merrifield might have made her more rational and less flighty, and all that sort of thing; but of course it was a very different tone from what the child was used to, and you couldn't tell what the young barbarians were out of sight.'

'So I began to think last winter; but I fancy you will find that she and Lily understand one another a good deal better than they did at first.'

'I thought she did not receive my intelligence as a deliverance. I am glad if she can carry away an affectionate remembrance, but I want to have her under my own eye.'

'I suppose that's all right,' was the half reluctant reply.

'There's Phyllis. She is full of good sense, with no nonsense about her or May, and her girls are downright charming.'

'Very likely; but I say, Maurice, you must not underrate Lilias. She has gone through a good deal with Dolores, and I believe she has been the making of her. You've had to leave the poor child a good deal to herself and Fraulein, and, as you see by this affair, she had some ways that made it hard for Lily to deal with her at first.'

Her father plainly did not like this. 'There was no harm in the poor child, but as I should have foreseen, there's always an atmosphere of sentiment and ritual and flummery about Lilias, totally different from what she was used to.'

Colonel Mohun had nearly said, 'So much the better,' but turned it into, 'I think you will change your opinion.'