"It does not seem likely, certainly, that Mr. Diamond should have confided the circumstance to Mrs. Errington," observed Minnie, thoughtfully. "Confided! No; I never knew a man less likely to confide anything to anybody." "However, after all, it is a thing which all the world might know, isn't it, papa?" Dr. Bodkin was not interested in the question. He gave a great loud yawn, and declared it was time for Minnie to go to bed. "It doesn't follow that I'm sleepy because you yawn, papa!" she said saucily. "You are tired though, puss! I see it in your face. Go to bed. Mrs. Bodkin, get Minnie off to rest." He bent to kiss his daughter, and bid her good night. "Say 'God bless' me, papa," she whispered, drawing his head down and kissing his forehead. "Don't I always say it? God bless you, my darling!" There were tears in Minnie's eyes as she turned her head away among her cushions. But nobody saw them. She talked to the maid who undressed her about Mr. Powell, the Methodist preacher, and asked her if she had heard him, and what the folks said about him in the town. "No, Miss Minnie. I've never heard him, and I know master wouldn't think it right for any of us to be going to a dissenting chapel. But I do think as there's some good to be got there, miss. For my brother Richard, him that lives groom at Pudcombe Hall--he went and got--got 'conversion,' I think they call it, at Mr. Powell's. And since then he's never touched a drop of liquor, nor a bad word never comes out of his mouth. And he says he's quite happy and comfortable in his mind, miss." "Is he? How I envy him!" CHAPTER VI. It is exceedingly disagreeable to find that a scheme you have set your head on, or a prospect which smiles before you, is displeasing to the persons who surround you. It gives a cold shock to the glow of anticipation. Algernon did not perhaps care to sympathise very keenly with other folks' pleasure, but he certainly desired that they should be pleased with what pleased him, which is not quite the same thing. His mother informed him--perhaps with a dash of the Ancram colouring; although we have seen how unjustly the worthy lady was suspected of falsehood by Dr. Bodkin on a late occasion--that Mr. Diamond disapproved of his refusing Mr. Filthorpe's offer, and of his resolve to go to London. Dr. Bodkin, Algernon knew, did not approve it; neither did Minnie, although she had never said so in words. How unpleasantly chilly people were, to be sure! Mrs. Errington did not like Mr. Diamond. She mistrusted him. His silence and gravity, his odd sarcastic smiles, and taciturn politeness, made her uneasy. Despite the patronising way in which she had spoken of him to Minnie Bodkin, in her heart she thought the young man to be horribly presuming. "I'm sure he doesn't appreciate you at all, Algy," she declared, winding up a list of Mr. Diamond's defects and misdemeanours with this culminating accusation.