They were in the conservatory all the time; and it was curious how after Pringle came in what a tremendous lot of gardening Lizzie had to do, and how she could not move the pots about, or exercise her little trowel without Tom's help. Shortly afterwards she darted off up-stairs somehow with a very flushed face. Stooping always does send the colour to one's head, you know. And then Tom told Lizzie's brother all about it. "I'm awfully glad, old fellow," said Herbert Pringle, B.A.--"I am awfully glad, old fellow. Nothing could have pleased me better. I thought you were rather spoony on Lizzie, you know, all along, and I was expecting something like this." And they shook hands together in mutual congratulation. Tom thought Lizzie's brother a very fine, good-natured, clever fellow indeed! "By-the-way," said Pringle, after a pause, "have you asked your mother about this?" Tom looked rather glum; he thought Lizzie's brother a little like the stern parent now. "Not yet," he answered. "I am going up to tell her now; but it'll be all right, you know." "I am very glad to hear it, for I would not let you and Lizzie enter into any engagement without her consent. It would not be right, as she's placed me here in her parish, you know." Herbert Pringle had very serious thoughts on the subject of etiquette, and rather doubted the dowager's consent being obtained, from all he had heard of her from the campaigner, and knew of her himself. "Oh! that'll be all right," said Tom. And then Lizzie had come down again, looking bewitchingly beautiful, and Tom spent an hour of ecstasy, after which he took up his hat to go. Lizzie knew the errand he was now going on--to speak to the dowager--and she wished tearful success to him, and gave him a pretty adieu as he went off exultant: for he said his mother would never refuse her consent to an angel! How he fared in his enterprise has been already detailed, for as soon as he hinted at the thing his mother had broken out with her characteristic diatribe. And now the pleasant little drama was brought to an abrupt conclusion. It was all over! He could not marry Lizzie without his mother's consent; the crimson sea of love was now covered with the heaving billows of adversity. He would go abroad somewhere, for he should go mad if he stopped here and could not see his darling, and Lizzie, of course, she would die of a broken heart: it was always the usual routine in tragedies like this. Tom was very miserable, for he had yet to see Lizzie and her brother-- from whom he had gone off so exultant--and tell of his defeat. The world was a blank to him now! "Fiddle-de-dee!" Volume 2, Chapter X. MARKWORTH VERSUS HARTSHORNE. Markworth was as good as his word. As soon as he saw that there was no chance of prevailing on the old dowager to pay over Susan's inheritance without calling in the aid of the law, he quickly set the slowly-moving wheels of that ponderous and unwieldly machinery in motion.