Sir Nash and his son stepped in, followed by Captain Bohun and Richard North, who would accompany them to the station. As Mr. North turned indoors again after watching the carriage away, he ran against his daughter Matilda, resplendent in glittering black silk and jet. "They have invited you to visit them, have they not, papa?" "They have invited me--yes. But I shall be none the nearer going there, Matilda." "Then I wish you would, for I want to go," she returned, speaking imperiously. "Uncle Nash asked me. He asked mamma, and said would I accompany her: and I should like to go. Do you hear, papa? I should like to go." It was all very well for Miss Matilda North to say "Uncle Nash." Sir Nash was no relation to her whatever: but that he was a baronet, she might have remembered it. "You and your mamma can go," said Mr. North with animation, as the seductive vision of the house, relieved of madam's presence for an indefinite period, rose mentally before him. "But mamma says she shall not go." "Oh, does she?" he cried, his spirits and the vision sinking together. "She'll change her mind perhaps, Matilda. _I_ can't do anything in it, you know." As if to avoid further colloquy, he passed on to his parlour and shut the door sharply. Matilda North turned into the dining-room, her handsome black silk train following her, her discontented look preceding her. Just then Mrs. North came downstairs, a coquettish, fascinating sort of black lace hood upon her head, one she was in the habit of wearing in the grounds. Matilda North heard the rustle of the robes, and looked out again. "Are you going to walk, mamma?" "I am. Have you anything to say against it?" "It would be all the same if I had," was the pert answer. Not very often did Matilda North gratuitously retort upon her mother; but she was in an ill humour: the guests had gone away much sooner than she had wished or expected, and madam had vexed her. "That lace hood is not mourning," resumed Miss Matilda North, defiantly viewing madam from top to toe. Madam turned the hood and the haughty face it encircled on her presuming daughter. The look was enough in itself; and what she might have said was interrupted by the approach of Bessy. "Have you any particular orders to give this morning, madam?" Bessy asked of her stepmother--whom she as often called madam as mamma, the latter word never meeting with fond response from Mrs. North to _her_. "If I have I'll give them later," imperiously replied madam, sweeping out at the hall-door. "What has angered her now?" thought Bessy. "I hope and trust it is nothing connected with papa. He has enough trouble without having to bear ill-temper."