“Young Sundon, of Chevely,” echoed Squire Trevor irritably, “the spark who stood up against his betters at Peasmarsh? I forbid you, Lady Bell, to have a word to say to any one of the pack.” “Who speaks of having a word to say?”—she resented the prohibition nevertheless; “mayn’t a cat look at a king?” And Lady Bell did take a poor consolation in looking her fill at the comely, lighthearted young couple. In return the couple looked hard at Lady Bell, and, as she convinced herself with a swelling heart, repressed a smile at her associations, and pitied her. At last, meeting the Sundons, when she had broken away from Mr. Trevor, and was riding with the vicar’s daughter or with a servant, the beautiful, assured-looking lady made an advance to Lady Bell. Mrs. Sundon’s was one of those faces which are full of character and latent strength. This was more true with regard to her face than to that of her bland but languid companion. Therefore she took the initiative, smiled in a friendly way, and nodded neighbour fashion, while Mr. Sundon lifted his hat, and held it till the parties had passed each other. As for Lady Bell, she smiled, flushed, and nodded slightly in return, with a girl’s shy, inconsiderate triumph in evading the Squire’s tyrannical mandate, for smiling and nodding were not speaking to the Sundons—husband and wife. There was one person close to Lady Bell who was ready to give her a different version of a wife’s duty to a husband than a flighty and very human subterfuge implied. That person had been regularly commissioned to lecture Lady Bell and keep an eye on her. In introducing Lady Bell to his cousin, the vicar’s wife, the Squire had said, half in homely jocoseness, which might have been very well had there been a good understanding between the ill-matched couple, half in tart earnestness, “I give my wife into your charge, Ann; you’ll look after her, and see that she minds her duty, and does not get into scrapes.” “I accept the charge, cousin,” responded Mrs. Walsh promptly and with the utmost gravity; “I’ll do my best for the young lady,” and she did not even add, “if she’ll allow me;” while poor, touchy, aristocratic Lady Bell, drew up her dainty figure and tossed her head in vain at the bargain made, like her marriage itself, will-he nill-he. Mrs. Walsh was the wife of a hard-working clergyman, who left to her a share of his public duties and the entire management of his private concerns, including the intercourse between the parsonage and the mansion of the Squire, Mrs. Walsh’s cousin. When Mr. Walsh was not in his church or school, he was in his study; and when he was neither in church, school, nor study, he was reading or praying by some cottage bedside.