distinct voice. "Mrs. Hamley enjoys but poor health, as perhaps you know, and Miss Drummond is quite the angel of the house, if I may say so without offence to Mr. Borrodaile."

"Ah! that is very nice," said Colonel Lowe. "Quite the right sort of thing for an adopted daughter.'

Mr. Hamley frowned; but he drank a glass of wine, and therefore made no answer.

"Still," continued the Colonel in a meditative kind of way, "the more valuable she is to you now, the more you will miss her when she leaves you."

"I was not aware that Miss Drummond entertained the intention of leaving us," said Mr. Hamley stiffly.

"No? Why, you cannot expect to keep a pretty creature like that always by her mother's side, can you?" laughed Colonel Lowe. "You will be losing her some day when Prince Prettyman makes his appearance."

Mr. Hamley's face flushed; Sydney's turned pale.

"I don't know anything about Prince Prettyman," he said; "but what I do know is, that I have never yet laid eyes on the man I would choose to give her to. Fact is, I care nothing about her marrying.

He

She has no call to marry while Abbey Holme has a roof to its rooms and a fire in its kitchen. Who would be as good to her as we are? who would treat her as so much the lady? She is happier now than she would be elsewhere, and there's time enough before her." spoke warmly, wiping his upper lip more than once; and the Colonel looked at him curiously, as if trying to read the man's inner thought. "Yes, that is all very well as a matter of sentiment, I dare say," he said; "but you surely don't intend to prevent her marrying if a suitable occasion offers ?-a gentleman of good blood, say ".

"Good blood!-good fiddlesticks!" interrupted Mr. Hamley coarsely. "Good blood makes as bad a job of life as bad blood does, and sometimes a precious sight worse. I would refuse the highest lord in the land if I did not think him good enough for her."

"I should have thought a lord, not quite the highest in the land, might have been considered Miss Drummond's equal,” said Colonel Lowe smoothly.

"Look here, Colonel, I'm a self-made man, I am," said Mr. Hamley, moving his chair sideways to the table and thrusting out his legs; "and I'm used to price things by value and not by name. Lord or no lord, I know Miss Drummond's figure, and I tell you he'll have to weigh pretty heavy who'd come up to it and get my yes."

"But if you did like the man and the match ?" pressed the Colonel. "You would then, I suppose, make the running smooth for the young people?-you would not send her to her husband empty-handed?"

Mr. Hamley took it all in at a glance. He sat upright in his chair

planted his feet firmly, flung back both lappels this time, and looked at Colonel Lowe steadily with another steady look at Sydney; handsome faces both of them, each in its own way, but both bad-the one reckless and the other shifty. Then he said in a slow, ponderous voice as if he was giving judgment on the bench: "I desire it should be distinctly understood-distinctly understood that I would not give Miss Drummond a brass farthing if she married. What I shall do for her if she remains single, and continues to act as she has done towards Mrs. Hamley and myself, is another matter. But the man who wants to be her husband will have to wait for my death if he wants to step into my shoes; and then I don't say they'll fit. Not during my life will he touch my money, married or single."

"That's explicit," said Colonel Lowe with a sneer.

"Yes, that's explicit if you choose to call it so," echoed Mr. Hamley. "I'll have no fortune-hunters nibbling around me, Colonel; you may take your oath of that."

He said this in such a loud voice that it broke into the conversation which Dr. Wickham was holding with Henry Fletcher respecting one James Garth, a yeoman in difficulties whose land Mr. Hamley was wanting.

"Who talks of fortune-hunters?" said Dr. Fletcher lazily. "Are there any in Milltown?"

"Perhaps you are one yourself, and can answer your own question," said Colonel Lowe. "Who knows? you may be Hamley's standing bête noire, Fletcher. We all know you admire Miss Drummond."

"She is very pretty, and one likes the young creatures one has seen grow up," said Dr. Fletcher.

"Now Fletcher, for heaven's sake don't you interfere! I hate to hear the ladies of one's own neighbourhood discussed in public as if they were so many servant-girls," cried Sydney fiercely. "It is such vilely bad form, I cannot understand how any gentleman can allow it!"

"I agree with you. It is bad taste, and not my way generally," answered Dr. Fletcher in the manner of an apology.

"I am much indebted to Mr. Sydney Lowe for his consideration," sneered Mr. Hamley. "But some affairs are best discussed in public when the time is ripe, that there may be no doubt remaining in the neighbourhood. And that Miss Drummond will have no fortune if she marries during Mrs. Hamley's life-time, with Mrs. Hamley needing of her daily, cannot be known too far and wide."

"Let us trust that the fowls of the air, not to say the beasts of the field, will carry the secret to all whom it may concern. Fletcher, Wickham, both of you-do you hear?-you are not to make love to Miss Drummond. She is la fée défendue of Abbey Holme, and Mr. Hamley's motto is 'canis in præsepi.'"

Colonel Lowe said this in a loud voice, with perfect breeding as to

accent, inflection, gesture; but his smile and his eyes were not pleasant to look at, and Dr. Wickham, bending his head, said in a half-whisper to Henry Fletcher," Mephistopheles, by Jove!"

Sydney was white with rage. He looked first at his father and then at Mr. Hamley, and seemed only with the strongest effort to prevent an outburst. No higher motive of restraint than "at his own table" prevented him. Still, we may be thankful for any curbs at mad moments; and that Sydney Lowe was prevented from striking his father and flying at the throat of his guest by a mere consideration of conventional politeness was so much to the good of general morality. When we cannot have gold we must be content with brass; and paste answers the same purpose as diamonds, except for analysis.

"I don't know what you mean with your foreign tongues," said the rich brewer tossing off his wine and smacking his lips after it. "I never had much schooling in my days; and all I know about mottoes is that, when I married Mrs. Hamley and set up my carriage and a livery, I took for mine 'Victrix fortunæ sapientia,' which they tell me means Wisdom conquers fortune.' And so I say, and with a roll of aggressive self-satisfaction in his voice and manner-“I have always found it."

So

"It is a motto that holds good for two," said Sydney insolently.

No doubt, no doubt," returned Mr. Hamley, sticking his thumb into his arm-hole as was his favourite gesture, and playing noisily with his fingers on his chest, while with his elbow on the table and leaning back in his chair he helped himself again to wine. "But when you can catch a weasel asleep, Mr. Sydney, you have done the trick-hey? When Greeks meet then comes the tug of war. Doesn't somebody say that? I believe it's in a book."

"Very true," said Colonel Lowe gravely; "but we are not Greeks at Milltown," with a sly look to his son. "Gentlemen "-looking round the table" you seem to be taking no wine. No! shall we then join the ladies?"

"And apologise to Miss Drummond for having committed the unpardonable offence of making her the subject of our discussions," said Sydney with a dark look.

"Right," echoed Dr. Fletcher.

"Save your breath to cool your porridge, gentlemen," said Mr. Hamley with undisguised insolence. "Miss Drummond has need of no man's protection where I am!"

"You should have fulfilled your functions better just now," sneered Sydney; and Mr. Hamley, not to be outdone, turned his head just as he was leaving the room, and said, "Pass that on to the Colonel," as he swaggered through the hall.

In the drawing-room, because he was a little flushed with wine and a great deal excited by wrath, Sydney paid Dora the most marked

attention, and seemed disposed to set everything at defiance-his father, Mr. Hamley, the opinion of the world, and possibilities. It was by no means his best policy; but he was too angry to be politic. Besides, he had by nature a large share of that kind of feminine unreasonableness which cares more for the indulgence of its momentary spite than the furtherance of its views by self-control; and if he could strike to-day he did not look forward to being struck in return to-morrow. And because Colonel Lowe too was given up for the time to one of his haunting demons, and because he wanted to annoy Mr. Hamley and to punish him for his insolence in daring to hold his own against a gentleman's desire, he paid Dora as much attention in his way as did his son; and both together bewildered and somewhat disturbed that young lady, though they enchanted her too. Or rather, they would have enchanted her had she been left in peace. But Mr. Hamley had no intention of leaving her in peace. He drew a chair close to hers, and no stratagems nor inducements could tempt him to leave it. He mounted guard over her by his looks; a black and savage guard; and though he took no active hostile part against the compliments and pretty speeches which Sydney and his father showered like fireworks over her, yet he let them see plainly enough that they were not to his liking, and made her understand that what she accepted now she would have to pay for afterwards.

He spoke to her himself frequently, interrupting the two men rudely, with a fierce and familiar manner of ownership that nearly maddened Sydney-a manner, too, strangely at variance with the artificial and lumbering formalities of his usual company habits.

Dora, who had not the mot d'énigme, was at a loss to understand its true meaning. She did her best to steer clear with her usual clever temporizing; but she failed. For every smile and blush and pretty acceptance of gallant words from father or son, Mr. Hamley spoke to her savagely; for every deprecating look to him and sweetvoiced endeavour to join him into the talk, Colonel Lowe laughed disagreeably, or Sydney pressed her foot beneath the chair with a savage pressure which it was wonderful Mr. Hamley did not see. Still, all this turmoil excited her vanity, and pleased it. To see herself the battle-ground, as it were, of these three men, was charming to her; and she felt quite like a little Queen of Beauty sitting on the dais and watching the tilters in the field below. She had never come out so prominently before; and the other ladies of the party looked on, and either wondered what it betokened, or resented the fuss being made with her, according to their own pretensions and private moods. As for poor Mrs. Lowe the whole thing was a mystery from beginning to end; and she had but one intelligible thought connected with it, that the Colonel was more than ordinarily disagreeable, and that she wished he would not lead Syd into mischief.

CHAPTER XIV.

PAYING THE BILL.

Ar last the evening which seemed interminable to more than one, for the dinner had not been a success, came to an end, and the guests melted away as they do, whether they melt by degrees or with a rush. "Sic transit" was Dora's plaintive sentiment as she wrapped herself in her ermines and managed to make herself look even prettier than ever, though she put her unspoken lament into more homely language. Now too, that the excitement was over, she was beginning to fear the consequences. It was the bad quarter-of-an-hour when the bill was to be presented. To be sure, Mr. Hamley had always been good and kind to her, but that was because she had always been meek and obedient to him. She was a wise little girl in her generation, and knew that more than half the love given to us is because we please, not because we are worthy. And she was perfectly aware of the fact that her tenure at Abbey Holme, even now at this day, depended solely on the amount of use and pleasure of which she could be to her employers. For were they not her employers? she used to ask herself with cynical disdain of the sham she made it her life's business to practise. There were times when even she, Dora Drummond, took the truth in her hand and confessed it.

She knew now the task lying before her: and thrusting back into her heart all her gratified pride, and all the sweeter hope which this strange evening had roused in her, bent to her yoke with the easy grace habitual to her, and prepared to quench the fire and still the storm.

For her initial apology she looked up into her cousin's face and smiled tenderly as if innocent of all offence, so soon as they were shut up in the carriage alone. He met her flattering little look with a close mouth and hard eyes. He was grim and angry.

"I hope you enjoyed your evening?" he said abruptly, after they had been silent for some time.

"Yes, I did," she answered pleasantly. "Did you?"

"Not at all." He spoke with savage decision. "I never enjoyed myself less."

"I am so sorry, dear!" said Dora sympathetically. She seldom called Mr. Hamley dear, and only when they were alone. She had her reasons for keeping on distant personal terms with him, and it was a sign that she had to put out all her strength when her address became affectionate.

"Humph! you did not look like being sorry for anything, I think," said Mr. Hamley, frowning.

"I did not see you were uncomfortable, else I should have been very unhappy," she answered.