the squire.
'The dogs are uncommonly wild,' said Crosbie.
'They are not wild with me,' said the squire; 'nor yet with Dingles.' Dingles was the squire's gamekeeper. 'The fact is, you young men, nowadays, expect to have dogs trained to do all the work for you. It's too much labour for you to walk up to your game. You'll be late for dinner, girls, if you don't look sharp.'
'We're not coming up this evening, sir,' said Bell.
'And why not?'
'We're going to stay with mamma.'
'And why will not your mother come with you? I'll be whipped if I can understand it. One would have thought that under the present circumstances she would have been glad to see you all as much together as possible.'
'We're together quite enough,' said Lily. 'And as for mamma, I suppose she thinks—' And then she stopped herself, catching the glance of Bell's imploring eye. She was going to make some indignant excuse for her mother, some excuse which would be calculated to make her uncle angry. It was her practice to say such sharp words to him, and consequently he did not regard her as warmly as her more silent and more prudent sister. At the present moment he turned quickly round and went into the house; and then, with a very few words of farewell, the two young men followed him. The girls went back over the little bridge by themselves, feeling that the afternoon had not gone off altogether well.
'You shouldn't provoke him, Lily,' said Bell.
'And he shouldn't say those things about mamma. It seems to me that you don't mind what he says.'
'Oh, Lily.'
'No more you do. He makes me so angry that I cannot hold my tongue. He thinks that because all the place is his, he is to say just what he likes. Why should mamma go up there to please his humours?'
'You may be sure that mamma will do what she thinks best. She is stronger-minded than Uncle Christopher, and does not want any one to help her. But, Lily, you shouldn't speak as though I were careless about mamma. You didn't mean that, I know.'
'Of course I didn't.' Then the two girls joined their mother in their own little domain; but we will return to the men at the Great House.
Crosbie, when he went up to dress for dinner, fell into one of those melancholy fits of which I have spoken. Was he absolutely about to destroy all the good that he had done for himself throughout the past years of his hitherto successful life? or rather, as he at last put the question to himself more strongly,—was it not the case that he had already destroyed all that success? His marriage with Lily, whether it was to be for good or bad, was now a settled thing, and was not regarded as a matter admitting of any doubt. To do the man justice, I must declare that in all these moments of misery he still did the best he could to think of Lily herself as of a great treasure which he had won,—as of a treasure which should, and perhaps would, compensate him for his misery. But there was the misery very plain. He must give up his clubs, and his fashion, and all that he had hitherto gained, and be content to live a plain, humdrum, domestic life, with eight hundred a year, and a small house, full of babies. It was not the kind of Elysium for which he had tutored himself. Lily was very nice, very nice indeed. She was, as he said to himself, 'by odds, the nicest girl that he had ever seen.' Whatever might now turn up, her happiness should be his first care. But as for his own,—he began to fear that the compensation would hardly be perfect. 'It is my own doing,' he said to himself, intending to be rather noble in the purport of his soliloquy, 'I have trained myself for other things,—very foolishly. Of course I must suffer,—suffer damnably. But she shall never know it. Dear, sweet, innocent, pretty little thing!' And then he went on about the squire, as to whom he felt himself entitled to be indignant by his own disinterested and manly line of conduct towards the niece. 'But I will let him know what I think about it,' he said. 'It's all very well for Dale to say that I have been treated fairly. It isn't fair for a man to put forward his niece under false pretences. Of course I thought that he intended to provide for her.' And then, having made up his mind in a very manly way that he would not desert Lily altogether after having promised to marry her, he endeavoured to find consolation in the reflection that he might, at any rate, allow himself two years' more run as a bachelor in London. Girls who have to get themselves married without fortunes always know that they will have to wait. Indeed, Lily had already told him, that as far as she was concerned, she was in no hurry. He need not, therefore, at once withdraw his name from Sebright's. Thus he endeavoured to console himself, still, however, resolving that he would have a little serious conversation with the squire that very evening as to Lily's fortune.
And what was the state of Lily's mind at the same moment, while she, also, was performing some slight toilet changes preparatory to their simple dinner at the Small House?
'I didn't behave well to him,' she said to herself; 'I never do. I
