"You are going down to Netherleigh this afternoon with your father, Charles," said he. "But you can come home with me first and get some lunch. Wait a minute. I want to speak to Mr. Grubb." Mr. Grubb appeared to have vanished. Lord Acorn could not see him anywhere. He wrote a line in pencil, asking him to dine with him that day at seven o'clock, sent it to Leadenhall Street, and got into a cab with Charley. "Oh," said the Countess of Acorn, when she saw the ex-prisoner arrive, "so you _are_ here, young man! It is more than I expected." "And more than I did--since yesterday," confessed he. "Pray what name do you give to that devoted chivalry of yours, Charley?--the taking of another's sins upon your own shoulders?" whispered Frances Chenevix, who happened to be at her father's. In fact, Colonel Hope and Lady Sarah, outwardly anxious, and inwardly scandalized at the whole affair, beginning with Adela and ending with Charley, had despatched her to Chenevix House for any news there might be. "I don't know," answered Charley. "Perhaps you might call it infatuation." "That was just it," nodded Frances. "Don't you go and be an idiot again. _That_ is my mother's best name for you." Charles nodded assentingly. He saw the past in its true light now. He was a changed man. His confinement and reflections in prison, combined with the prospect of being condemned as a felon, from which he had then seen no chance of escape except by his own confession, which he had persistently resolved not to make, had added years to his experience in life. He was a light-hearted, light-headed boy when he entered Newgate; he came out of it older and graver than his years. More severely than for aught else did he blame himself for having responded in ever so slight a degree to the ridiculous flirtation commenced by Lady Adela; and for having fallen into worshipping her almost as he might have worshipped an angel; and he thanked God in his heart, now, that he had never been betrayed into offering her a disrespectful look or word. She belonged to her husband; not to him; and to be disloyal to either of them Charley would have regarded as the most consummate folly or sin.