“Oh, I do not mean anything grand; I mean common life, with the housekeeping to be provided for,” said I smiling, “and the daily bread, and the other mouths that have to eat it. I daresay, even you yourself, who seem to stand in no such need as Maurice, have found out something in the pleasant jingle you were talking of--of Mrs. Owen’s basket of keys.” The young man blushed once more that slight passing color of happiness, and answered gravely, yet with a smile, “It is true, I see what you mean--and it is very possible indeed--but,” he added, stopping abruptly, and looking at his friend, who was in the full tide of flirtation with Miss Reredos, “Mrs. Crofton, look there!” I shook my head. “Nothing will come of it,” said I; “they are amusing themselves.” Condign punishment came upon my head almost as I spoke; I had turned my head incautiously, and Johnnie and Alice had both heard me. “Amusing themselves!” cried Johnnie, hissing the words into my ears in a whisper. “Amusing! do you suppose that it is anything but her angel-sweetness, Mrs. Crofton, that makes her so forbearing with Maurice--_my_ brother? I adore her for it,” cried (but in a whisper) the deluded boy. “Amusing themselves!” cried Alice, raising her head, “and _you_ can say so, Mrs. Crofton? Oh, I am ashamed, to think a woman should forget herself so strangely; I could forgive anything--almost anything,” said Alice, correcting herself with a blush, “which really sprang from true strong feeling; but flirting--amusing themselves! Oh, Mrs. Crofton!” “My dear child, it is not my fault,” said I, “I have no hand in the matter, either one way or the other.” “Yes, that is true,” said Alice, with that lively impatience and disinclination to suffer a dear friend to rest in an opinion different from her own, which I have felt myself and understood perfectly,--“but you will not see how unworthy it is--how dishonoring to women! That is what wounds me.” “Is it not dishonoring to men as well?--two are playing at it, and the other creature is accountable likewise. Are you not concerned for the credit of your sex?” said I, turning to Owen. The young curate laughed, Alice blushed and looked deeply affronted, and Johnnie, turning all the fury of his jealousy upon me, looked as if it would have pleased him to do me some bodily harm. Well, well, one can bear all that--and I am happy to say that I think I accelerated distantly and humbly by this said conversation, the coming on of Maurice Harley’s fate. CHAPTER XIV.