The Mannerings arrived at Beaton Castle shortly after the doctor, on their return from the Continent. Dora was now completely woman-grown, and had gradually and tacitly taken the command of her father and all his ways. He had been happy in the certainty that when he left off work and consented to take that long rest, it was his own income upon which they set out--an income no longer encumbered with any debts to pay, even for old books. He had gone on happily upon that conviction ever since; they had travelled a great deal together, and he had completely recovered his health, and in a great degree his interest, both in science and life. He had even taken up those studies which had been interrupted by the shipwreck of his happiness, and the breaking up of his existence, and had recently published some of the results of them, with a sudden lighting up once again of the fame of the more youthful Mannering, from whom such great things had been expected. The more he had become interested in work and the pursuits of knowledge, the less he had known or thought of external affairs; and for a long time Dora had acted very much as she pleased, increasing such luxuries as he liked, and encouraging every one of the extravagances into which, when left to himself, he naturally fell. Sometimes still he would pause over an expensive book, with a half hesitation, half apology. “But perhaps we cannot afford it. I ought not to give myself so many indulgences, Dora.” “You know how little we spend, father,” Dora would say,--“no house going on at home to swallow up the money. We live for next to nothing here.” And he received her statement with implicit faith. Thus both the elder personages of this history were deceived, and found a great part of their happiness in it. Was it a false foundation of happiness, and wrong in every way, as Dr. Roland maintained? He took these two young people into the woods, and read them the severest of lessons. “You are two lies,” he said; “you are deceiving two people who are of more moral worth than either of you. It is probably not your fault, but that of some wicked grandmother; but you ought to be told it, all the same. And I don’t say that I blame you. I daresay I should do it also in your case. But it’s a shame, all the same.”