'We must get them an income. You'll find that Graham will fall on his legs at last.'
'He's a very long time before he begins to use them,' said Lady Staveley. 'And then you know The Cleeve is such a nice property, and Mr. Orme is———'
'But, my love, it seems that she does not like Mr. Orme.'
'No, she doesn't,' said the poor mother in a tone of voice that was very lachrymose. 'But if she would only wait she might like him,—might she not now? He is such a very handsome young man.'
'If you ask me, I don't think his beauty will do it.'
'I don't suppose she cares for that sort of thing,' said Lady Staveley, almost crying. 'But I'm sure of this, if she were to go and make a nun of herself, it would break my heart,—it would, indeed. I should never hold up my head again.'
What could Lady Staveley's idea have been of the sorrows of some other mothers, whose daughters throw themselves away after a different fashion?
After lunch on Sunday the judge asked his daughter to walk with him, and on that occasion the second church service was abandoned. She got on her bonnet and gloves, her walking-boots and winter shawl, and putting her arm happily and comfortably within his, started for what she knew would be a long walk.
'We'll get as far as the bottom of Cleeve Hill,' said the judge.
Now the bottom of Cleeve Hill, by the path across the fields and the common, was five miles from Noningsby.
'Oh, as for that, I'll walk to the top if you like,' said Madeline.
'If you do, my dear, you'll have to go up alone,' said the judge. And so they started.
There was a crisp, sharp enjoyment attached to a long walk with her father which Madeline always loved, and on the present occasion she was willing to be very happy; but as she started, with her arm beneath his, she feared she knew not what. She had a secret, and her father might touch upon it; she had a sore, though it was not an unwholesome festering sore, and her father might probe the wound. There was, therefore, the slightest shade of hypocrisy in the alacrity with which she prepared herself, and in the pleasant tone of her voice as she walked down the avenue towards the gate.
But by the time that they had gone a mile, when their feet had left the road and were pressing the grassy field-path, there was no longer any hypocrisy in her happiness. Madeline believed that no human being could talk as did her father, and on this occasion he came out with his freshest thoughts and his brightest wit. Nor did he, by any means, have the talk all to himself. The delight of Judge Staveley's conversation consisted chiefly in that—that though he
