"I think you're rather hard on her," objected Mrs Neville, true to her colours. "She didn't originate these stories, remember." "It's my belief she did!" retorted the Colonel. "She hates the Ingelows, and would move heaven and earth to injure them--spiteful, canting old harridan. I think Ingelow mistaken, and his vestments and candles and popish fal-lal great bosh--but hang it! he's a thoroughly good fellow in private life, and I'm not going to stand by and see him worried and his girls' characters taken away by that slanderous old Gamp, who probably began life in a chandler's shop--and I'll let him know that I'm not. I'll call on him this very afternoon, by George, I will?" At Cranston, as may be supposed, cheerful times did not prevail. Always gloomy and constrained, the gloom and constraint deepened tenfold in the days following upon the rupture. The General's ill-humour was now chronic, and when he did speak it was usually to make some incisive remark calculated to render everyone thoroughly ill at ease. Mrs Dorrien was freezingly acid, and the household saw no one and went nowhere, and, needless to say, all reference to the erring one was strictly taboo. Hubert heartily wished the Vacation would be quick and come to an end, and being considerably bored, and proportionately irritable, his sister had to bear the brunt of his--among other-- ill-tempers. As for poor Nellie, she felt the separation terribly. She had little thought that morning that she had seen the last of Roland, without even saying goodbye, too. And now she was forbidden even to write to him. Life was very hard--would better times ever come? CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. DORRIEN OF--NOWHERE.