Mark crunched the letter into his pocket again. "Mind, Caroline, not a word of this to her!" he exclaimed, laying his hand on his wife as she was rising. "It is not quite ready to be talked of yet." Miss Davenal entered at once upon the subject which had brought her--their quitting the Abbey for the other house. Mark understood she had come, as it were, officially; to fix time and place and means; and he had no resource but to tell her that he did not intend to enter upon it; did not intend to embark Caroline's money in any such purpose; did not, in fact, intend to remain in Hallingham. There ensued a battle: it was nothing else. What with Miss Davenal's indignation and what with Miss Davenal's deafness, the wordy war that supervened could be called little else. Caroline sat pretty quiet at first, taking her husband's side now and then. "You tell me you are going to leave Hallingham, and you won't tell me where you are going, or what you are going to do, Mark Cray!" reiterated Miss Davenal. "I'll tell you more about it when I know more myself." "But you can tell me what it is; you can tell me where it is. Is it at one of the London hospitals?" "It is in London," was Mark's answer, allowing the hospital to be assumed. "Then Mark Cray you are very wicked. And you"--turning to Caroline--"are foolish to uphold him in it. How can you think of giving up such a practice as this?" "I am tired of Hallingham," avowed Mark with blunt truth, for he was getting vexed. "You are--what?" cried Miss Davenal, not catching the words. "Sick and tired of Hallingham. And I don't care who knows it." Miss Davenal looked at him with some curiosity. "Is he gone out of his senses, Caroline?" "I am tired of Hallingham, too, aunt," said Caroline, audaciously. "I want to live in London." "And the long and the short of it is, that we mean to live in London, Miss Bettina," avowed Mark. "There. I don't care that my talents should be buried in a poking country place any longer." She looked from one to the other of them; she could not take it in. Sharp anger was rendering her ears somewhat more open than usual. "Buried!--a poking country place! And what of the twelve or fifteen hundred a-year practice that you would lightly throw away, Mark Cray?" "Oh, I shall do better than that in London. I have got a post offered me worth double that." She paused a few moments. "And what; are you to give for it?" "Never mind that," said Mark. "Yes, never mind that," rejoined Miss Bettina in a tone of bitter sarcasm. "When it comes to details, you can take refuge in 'never mind.' Do you suppose such posts are given away for nothing, Mark Cray? Who has been befooling you?" "But it will not be given for nothing," cried Caroline, betrayed to the injudicious avowal by the partizanship of her husband. "The money that is coining to me will be devoted to it."