"Certainly not, if I am to be insulted by my sister." "I have insulted no one," said Lady Sarah, haughtily. "It was no insult to tell me that I ought to have stayed in Italy, and not have come to my own house!" "Sarah, you ought not to have said that," exclaimed the Marchioness. "He complained that everything here was uncomfortable, and therefore I said it. He knows that I did not speak of his return in any other sense. Since he settled himself abroad there has not been a day on which I have not wished that he would come back to his own house and his own duties. If he will treat us properly, no one will treat him with higher consideration than I. But we have our own rights as well as he, and are as well able to guard them." "Sarah can preach as well as ever," he said. "Oh! my children,--oh! my children!" sobbed the old lady. "I have had about enough of this. I knew what it would be when you wrote to me to come to you." Then he took up his hat, as though he were going. "And am I to see nothing more of you?" asked his mother. "I will come to you, mother,--once a-week if you wish it. Every Sunday afternoon will be as good a time as any other. But I will not come unless I am assured of the absence of Lady Sarah. I will not subject myself to her insolence, nor put myself in the way of being annoyed by a ballyragging quarrel." "I and my sisters are always at Church on Sunday afternoons," said Lady Sarah. In this way the matter was arranged, and then the Marquis took himself off. For some time after he left the room the Marchioness sat in silence, sobbing now and again, and then burying her face in her handkerchief. "I wish we had gone away when he told us," she said, at last. "No, mamma," said her eldest daughter. "No,--certainly no. Even though all this is very miserable, it is not so bad as running away in order that we might be out of his way. No good can ever be got by yielding in what is wrong to any one. This is your house; and as yours it is ours." "Oh, yes." "And here we can do something to justify our lives. We have a work appointed to us which we are able to perform. What will his wife do for the people here? Why are we not to say our prayers in the Church which we all know and love? Why are we to leave Alice--and Mary? Why should he, because he is the eldest of us,--he, who for so many years has deserted the place,--why is he to tell us where to live, and where not to live. He is rich, and we are poor, but we have never been pensioners on his bounty. The park, I suppose, is now closed to us; but I am prepared to live here in defiance of him." This she said walking up and down the room as she spoke, and she said it with so much energy that she absolutely carried her sisters with her and again partly convinced her mother. CHAPTER XXII. THE MARQUIS AMONG HIS FRIENDS.