'I want neither a judge nor an intercessor in you.' 'Come, Lucy, it really would be for every one's good if you would go and take care of poor Honor. You have been using her vilely, and I should think you'd had enough of Rashe for one while.' 'If I have used her vilely, at least I have dealt openly by her,' said Lucilla. 'She has always seen the worst of me on the surface. Can you bear to talk of her when you know how you are treating her?' He coloured violently, and his furious gesture would have intimidated most sisters; but she stood her ground, and answered his stammering demand what she dared to imply. 'You may go into a passion, but you cannot hinder me from esteeming it shameful to make her mission a cover for associating with one whom she would regard with so much horror as Jack Hastings.' 'Jack Hastings!' cried Owen, to her amazement, bursting into a fit of laughter, loud, long, and explosive. 'Well done, Rashe!' 'You told her so!' 'She told me so, and one does not contradict a lady.' 'Something must have put it into her head.' 'Only to be accounted for by an unrequited attachment,' laughed Owen; 'depend on it, a comparison of dates would show Hastings's incarceration to have been the epoch of Rashe's taking to the high masculine line-- '"If e'er she loved, 'twas him alone Who lived within the jug of stone."' 'For shame, Owen; Rashe never was in love.' But he went on laughing at Rashe's disappointment at his solitary arrival till she said, tartly, 'You cannot wonder at our thinking you must have some reason for neither mentioning your companion's name nor bringing him with you.' 'In fact, no man not under a cloud could abstain from paying homage to the queen of the anglers.' It was so true as to raise an angry spot on her cheek, and provoke the hasty excuse, 'It would have been obvious to have brought your friend to see your cousin and sister.' 'One broken-backed, both unwashed! O, the sincerity of the resistance I overheard! No gentleman admitted, forsooth! O, for a lodge in some vast wilderness! Yes; St. Anthony would have found it a wilderness indeed without his temptations. What would St. Dunstan have been minus the black gentleman's nose, or St. Kevin but for Kathleen? It was a fortunate interposition that Calthorp turned up the day before I came, or I might have had to drag the lake for you.' This personal attack only made her persist. 'It was very different when we were alone or with you; you know very well that there could have been no objection.' 'No objection on your side, certainly, so I perceive; but suppose there were no desire on the other?' 'Oh!' in a piqued voice, 'I know many men don't care for ladies' society, but I don't see why they should be nameless.' 'I thought you would deem such a name unworthy to be mentioned.' 'Well, but who is the shy man? Is it the little Henniker, who used to look as if he would dive under the table when you brought him from Westminster?'