"Oh, he may be warm enough, for aught we know," replied Miss Slingsby, "but there is the breakfast bell; papa will be down and want his coffee." CHAPTER XIX. The Struggle near the River. Nobody could perceive at the breakfast-table that Sir John Slingsby had suffered from the strong emotions by which we have seen him influenced on the preceding night. No one could have conceived that his state and fortune were in the tottering condition which Ned Hayward had represented. He was as gay, as happy, as full of jest and merriment as a schoolboy of seventeen. And as his sister was peculiarly cheerful, it seemed to excite in him even a more merry and jocund liveliness. To say the truth, Mrs. Clifford felt that her bond was broken; that her visit to her brother's house, and her stay with him, had unlinked one of the chains of cold and formal proprieties which had been wound round her for so many years. Heaven knows, she never wished to see, hear, or do, think, or countenance anything that was evil; but yet her heart felt freer and lighter--it had more room to expand. In fact the sunshine of early days seemed to be reflected upon it, and it opened out to the light like a flower. She was gayer than her daughter, though silent and still, except when called into conversation by some lively sally; but she smiled, was good-humoured, and answered even merrily, when a jest passed round, and seemed to wonder at the more than wonted gravity of her Mary. Isabella was almost too gay; as gay as the habits of the world and her own sense of propriety permitted; but, to an observing eye this cheerfulness was rather assumed than real; and to any one who, like Mary, had the secret of her heart, it was very evidently affected to cover a deeper and a graver current beneath. "Well, what's the news this morning?" said Sir John, as Isabella poured out the tea and coffee; "a quarter to nine and no tidings stirring? This seems to promise a dull day. Nobody's mill been burnt down? Nobody's cat killed? Nobody's wife eloped? Nobody's daughter gone to Gretna-green? Nobody's house been broken open, game stolen, hen-roosts been plundered, pocket been picked, or nose been pulled?--Faith we shall never get through the four-and-twenty hours without something to enliven us. All the objects of country life are gone. It seems to me that the world has turned as dead as a horse-pond, and men and women nothing but the weed at the top, waiting coolly in green indifference for the ducks to come and gobble them up. Lack-a-day! lack-a-day! if we had but Ned Hayward here to cheer us up! What can have become of him?" "Oh, he has come back, my dear uncle," replied Mary; "I saw him upon the terrace as I was taking my morning's walk." "Then why is he not here?" exclaimed Sir John Slingsby, "why is he absent from his post? What business has he at Tarningham-park, unless it be like a ray of the summer sunshine to make every thing gay around him?"