'Yes,' was the cool response; 'ma thinks it part of your duty to make yourself generally useful; and, I suppose, you can play whist?' The girl was too underbred to be aware how heartless was the _sang froid_, in which she suggested, or commanded, that Alison should make herself useful. 'I would rather be excused.' 'But ma says you must!' 'Must--why?' 'A hand is wanted at the whist table, and I want Bevil at the piano, all to myself.' 'It is utterly impossible. I have a headache,' replied Alison, goaded to desperation. 'Bother your headache!' was the elegant response; 'try sal volatile, Rimmel's vinegar, anything, but come.' However, Alison remained inflexible, and so far from making herself 'useful' to either Mrs. De Jobbyns and her daughter, by appearing in their circle downstairs, she retired to bed--to think and weep--but not to sleep. The vicar of Chilcote was, she knew, in town, and to him she would appeal to procure her another home, where she would hear the name of Bevil Goring no more! CHAPTER XIX. THE FORECLOSURE EFFECTED. While Dalton, under Laura's care and nursing, had been fast recovering health and strength, on leave of absence, at Chilcote Grange; and Jerry Wilmot, though less tenderly cared for at Wilmothurst, surrounded as he was then by every luxury and comfort still, was also fast learning to forget all he had endured in Ashanti, and all the natural buoyancy of his spirits was returning, Lady Julia was as full of unspeakable animosity at Mr. Chevenix as the languid character of her aristocratic nature would permit her to be. A regular breach had replaced the cool indifference with which she had viewed that personage. In the profundity of his plebeian insolence he had at last taken full measures to obtain the interest on his mortgages, and more, he had foreclosed them, and ruin now awaited the house of Wilmot! And again and again, while tenderly carressing Flossie, or having her long tresses brushed out by Mademoiselle Florine, she languidly bewailed to Cousin Emily, or to Jerry, who lingered near her with the cigar in hand he dared not light in her presence, that 'the artful pillager of the Wilmot estates would drive her to a beggar's grave in a foreign land.' Though Jerry thought life was too short 'for all this sort of thing,' and was making up his mind to 'cut the whole thing' and go to India, he was still on friendly terms with old Mr. Chevenix, but nevertheless was greatly ruffled by stories that reached him of Lord Twiseldown's attention to Bella, and was once, as he phrased it, 'awfully cut up,' when coming upon them riding together without even a groom in attendance, and nearly overtook them in a green lane--yea, would have done so, had he not timely drawn the bridle of his own horse.