provision for you. He means that you should have the house-—————"

"But I never thought she was going to be married, by Jove," protested the rightful owner. "Look here, Molly; you shall have the furniture. The house would sell for a good bit of money. I tell you, Wentworth-—”

nant Lucy, whose little hand clenched involuntarily in her passion. She had a great deal of self-control, but she was not quite equal to such an emergency; and it was all she could do to keep from stamping her foot, which was the only utterance of rage possible to a gentlewoman in her position. "I Jack Wentworth did not move would rather see my father's house from the mantelpiece where he was desecrated by you living in it," she standing, but he cast a glance upon cried, passionately, "than accept it his unlucky follower which froze as a gift from your hands. Mary, the words on his lips. "My good we are not obliged to submit to fellow, you are quite at liberty to this. Let us rather go away at decline my mediation in your once. I will not remain in the affairs. Probably you can manage same room with this man!" cried them better your own way,' said Lucy. She was so overwhelmed Wodehouse's hero. "I can only with her unwonted passion that beg the Miss Wodehouses to par- she lost all command of the posidon my intrusion." Jack Went- tion, and even of herself, and was worth's first step towards the door false for the moment to all her let loose a flood of nameless ter- sweet codes of womanly behaviour. rors upon the soul of his victim. "How dare you, sir! she cried, If he were abandoned by his in the sudden storm, for which nopowerful protector, what would body was prepared. "We will rebecome of him? His very desire move the things belonging to us, of money, and the avarice which with which nobody has any right prompted him to grudge making to interfere, and we will leave imany provision for his sisters, was, mediately. Mary, come with me!" after all, not real avarice, but the When she had said this, Lucy swept spendthrift's longing for more to out of the room, pale as a little spend. The house which he was fury, and feeling in her heart a sentenced to give up represented savage female inclination to strike not so much gold and silver, but so Jack Wentworth, who opened the many pleasures, fine dinners, and door for her, with her little white bad company. He could order the clenched hand. Too much excited dinners by himself, it is true, and to remark whether her sister had get men like himself to eat them; followed her, Lucy ran up-stairs but the fine people-the men who to her room, and there gave way had once been fine, and who still to the inevitable tears. Coming retained a certain tarnished glory to herself after that was a terribly -were, so far as Wodehouse was humbling process to the little concerned, entirely in Jack Wentworth's keeping. He made a piteous appeal to his patron as the great man turned to go away.

"I don't see what good it can do you to rob a poor fellow!" cried Wodehouse. "But look here, I ain't going to turn against your advice. I'll give it them, by Jove, for lifethat, is, for Mary's life," said the munificent brother. "She's twenty years older than Lucy-"

"How do you dare to subject us to such insults?" cried the indig

Anglican. She had never fallen into "a passion" before that she knew of, certainly never since nursery times; and often enough her severe serene girlhood had looked reproving and surprised upon the tumults of Prickett's Lane, awing the belligerents into at least temporary silence. Now poor Lucy sat and cried over her downfall; she had forgotten herself; she had been conscious of an inclination to stamp, to scold, even to strike, in the vehemence of her indignation

and she was utterly overpowered hind, and watched the course of by the thought of her guiltiness. events with anxious steadiness. "The very first temptation!" she She did not care for money any said to herself; and made terrible more than Lucy did; but she could reflections upon her own want of not help thinking it would be very strength and endurance. To-day, pleasant if she could produce one too, of all days, when God had been good action on "poor Tom's" part so good to her! "If I yield to the to plead for him against any posfirst temptation like this, how shall sible criticisms of the future. Miss I ever endure to the end?" cried Wodehouse was old enough to Lucy, and in her heart thought, know that her Rector was not an with a certain longing, of the sacra- ideal hero, but an ordinary man, ment of penance, and tried to think and it was quite possible that he what she could do that would be might point a future moral now most disagreeable-to the mortify- and then with "that brother of ing of the flesh. Perhaps if she yours, my dear." The elder sister had possessed a more lively sense waited accordingly, with her heart of humour, another view of the beating quick, to know the decisubject might have struck Lucy; sion, very anxious that she might but humour, fortunately for the have at least one generous deed to unity of human sentiment, is gene- record to the advantage of poor rally developed at a later period Tom. of life, and Lucy's fit of passion "I think we are quite decided only made her think with greater on the point," said Jack Wenttenderness and toleration of her worth. Knowing your sentiments, termagants in Prickett's Lane. Wodehouse, I left directions with The three who were left down- Waters about the papers. I think stairs were in their different ways you will find him quite to be trustimpressed by Lucy's passion. Jack ed, Miss Wodehouse, if you wish Wentworth, being a man of hum- to consult him about letting or

our and cultivation, was amused, sellingbut respectful, as having still a

"By Jove!" exclaimed Wode

certain faculty of appreciating abso- house, under his breath.

"

lute purity when he saw it. As for Which, I suppose," continued Wodehouse, he gave another rude the superb Jack, you will wish laugh, but was cowed in spite of to do under the pleasant circuinhimself, and felt involuntarily what stances, upon which I beg to offer a shabby wretch he was, recognis- you my congratulations. Now, Tom, ing that fact more impressively from my good fellow, I am at your serthe contempt of Lucy's pale face vice. I think we have done our than he could have done through business here." hours of argument. Miss Wodehouse, for her part, though very anxious and nervous, was not without an interest in the question under discussion. She was not specially horrified by her brother, or anything he could say or do. He was Tom to her-a boy with whom she had once played, and whom she had shielded with all her sisterly might in his first transgressions. She had suffered a great deal more by his means than Lucy could ever suffer, and consequently was more tolerant of him. She kept her seat with the St. Agnes in the chair be

Wodehouse got up in his sulking reluctant way like a lazy dog. “I suppose you won't try to move the furniture now?" he said. These were the only adieux he intended to make, and perhaps they might have been expressed with still less civility, had not Jack Wentworth been standing waiting for him, at the door.

'Oh, Tom! I am so thankful you have done it," cried Miss Wodehouse. "It is not that I care for the money; but oh, Tom, I am so glad to think nobody can say any thing now." She followed them

wistfully to the door, not giving up hopes of a kinder parting. "I think it is very kind and nice of you, and what dear papa would have wished," said the elder sister, forgetting how all her father's plans had been brought to nothing; "and of course you will live here all the same?" she said, with a little eagerness, “that is till-till-as long as we are here—_—_—__"

Miss Wodehouse, going out after him to the landing-place. But Wodehouse was in no humour to be gracious. Instead of paying any attention to her, he looked regretfully at the property he had lost.

"Good-bye," he said, vaguely. "By Jove! I know better than Jack Wentworth does the value of property. We might have had a jolly month at Homburg out of "Good-bye, Miss Wodehouse," that old place," said the prodigal, said Jack Wentworth. "I don't with regret, as he went down the think either your brother or I will old-fashioned oak stair. That was stay much longer in Carlingford. his farewell to the house which he You must accept my best wishes had entered so disastrously on the for your happiness all the same." day of his father's funeral. He followed his leader with a sulky aspect through the garden, not venturing to disobey, but yet feeling the weight of his chains. And this was how Wodehouse accomplished his personal share in the gift to his sisters of which Miss Wodehouse told everybody that it was "so good of Tom!"

"You are very kind, I am sure," said the embarrassed bride; "and oh, Tom, you will surely say goodbye? Say good-bye once as if you meant it; don't go away as if you did not care. Tom, I always was very fond of you; and don't you feel a little different to us, now you've done us a kindness?" cried

CHAPTER XLIV.

"Going to be married!" said the Squire; and to a sister of I thought you told me she was an old as Dora, Frank? I did not expect to meet with any further complications," the old man said, plaintively; "of course you know very well Í don't object to your marrying; but why on earth did you let me speak of Wentworth Rectory to Huxtable?" cried Mr. Wentworth. He was almost more impatient about this new variety in the family circumstances than he had been of more serious distresses. "God bless me, sir," said the Squire, "what do you mean by it? You take means to affront your aunts and lose Skelmersdale; and then you put it into my head to have Mary at Wentworth; and then you quarrel with the Rector, and get into hot water in Carlingford; and to make an end of all, you coolly propose to an innocent young woman, and tell me you are going to marry-what on earth do you mean?"

"Well, well," said the Squire. Naturally, having been married so often himself, he could not refuse a certain response to such a call upon his sympathy. "I hope you have made a wise choice," said the experienced father, not without a sigh; "a great deal depends upon that not only your own comfort, sir, but very often the character of your children and the credit of the family. You may laugh," said Mr. Wentworth, to whom it was laughing matter; "but long before you are, as old as I am, you will know the truth of what I say. Your mother, Frank, was a specimen of what a woman ought to be

no

-not to speak of her own children, then to come and tell me you want there was nobody else who ever to marry—” knew how to manage Gerald and Jack. Of course I am not speaking of Mrs. Wentworth, who has her nursery to occupy her," said the Squire, apologetically. "I hope you have made a judicious choice."