CONTENTS
CHAPTER III. CONTRARY TO THE REGULATIONS OF HER MAJESTY'S POST-OFFICE.
CHAPTER IV. AN UNCHEERFUL PICNIC.
CHAPTER V. THE FINESSE IN TRUMPS.
CHAPTER VI. MR WITHERS WITHDRAWS HIMSELF.
CHAPTER VIII. MISS AYNTON'S THUMB IS TURNED BACK.
CHAPTER IX. THRUST AND COUNTER-THRUST.
CHAPTER XI. MR ARTHUR HALDANE MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL.
CHAPTER XII. THE LETTER FROM PARIS.
MARY,” said Lady Lisgard gravely, when her attendant had closed the door behind her, “I want to have a little serious talk with you to-night.”
“As you please, my Lady,” returned Mistress Forest, in a tone which the other, did not fail to mark: it was a very respectful tone—a more humble one even than she was ordinarily wont to use—but there was a certain deliberation and set resolve about it too, which expressed as decidedly, as though she had used the words: “I am ready to listen, madam; but I know very well what you are going to ask me, and I have made up my mind already to answer 'No.'”
“Mary,” continued my Lady earnestly, but not without a tremor in her kind soft voice, “come and sit here on the sofa beside me, and let us not be mistress and maid tonight, but only friends.”
“Yes, madam;” and Mary's voice trembled too, for this unlooked-for arrangement would place her, she knew, at a disadvantage in the argument which was certainly at hand. “We have known one another many, many years, Mary—more than half our lives—and I don't think we have had a single quarrel yet.”
“Not one, ma'am, not one,” assented the waiting-maid; already, after the manner of her susceptible kind, beginning to cry.
“I can remember you when quite a child, Mary; not fifteen years old; as willing and kind-hearted a girl as the sun ever shone upon; and when I had not a friend in the world, nor even so much as a coin that I could call my own, and when I was weak and sick at heart, having lost all that was dear to me, I remember who it was that tended and caressed me as though I was her own sister.”
“Don't ye, don't ye, my Lady; hush, hush!” cried the w