‘I am glad—we will send to inquire to-morrow, but I cannot come—ha, ha! a new infernal machine. Good-bye, Friar Bacon.’ Away he went, and Maurice stood looking after him with complacent disdain. ‘There they go, Cedric and Rotherwood, equally well provided with brains! What is the use of talking science to either?’ It was late when he reached the house, and his two sisters shortly came down to tea, with news that Adeline was asleep and Phyllis was going to bed. The accident was again talked over. ‘Well,’ said Emily, ‘I do not understand it, but I suppose papa will.’ ‘The telling papa is a bad part of the affair, with William and Eleanor there too,’ said Jane. ‘I do not mean to speak to Phyllis about it again,’ said Emily, ‘it makes her cry so terribly.’ ‘It will come out fast enough,’ sighed Maurice. ‘Good-night.’ More than once in the course of the night did poor Phyllis wake and cry, and the next day was the most wretched she had ever spent; she was not allowed to stay in the nursery, and the schoolroom was uninhabitable, so she wandered listlessly about the garden, sometimes creeping down to the churchyard, where she looked up at the old tower, or pondered over the graves, and sometimes forgetting her troubles in converse with the dogs, in counting the rings in the inside of a foxglove flower, or in rescuing tadpoles stranded on the broad leaf of a water-lily. [Picture: Rescuing tadpoles stranded on the broad leaf of a water-lily.—p. 247] Her sisters and brothers were not less forlorn. Emily sighed and lamented; Adeline was feverish and petulant; and Jane toiled in vain to please and soothe both, and to comfort Maurice; but with all her good-temper and good-nature she had not the spirit which alone could enable her to be a comfort to any one. Ada whined, fretted, and was disobedient, and from Maurice she met with nothing but rebuffs; he was silent and sullen, and spent most of the day in the workshop, slowly planing scraps of deal board, and watching with a careless eye the curled shavings float to the ground. In the course of the afternoon Alethea and Marianne came to inquire after the patient. Jane came down to them and talked very fast, but when they asked for a further explanation of the cause of the accident, Jane declared that Maurice said it was impossible that any one who did not understand chemistry should know how it happened, and Alethea went away strongly reminded that it was no affair of hers. Notes passed between the New Court and the vicarage, but Mr. Devereux was feeling the effect of his yesterday’s exertion too much to repeat it, and no persuasion of the sisters could induce Maurice to visit him. CHAPTER XXII THE BARONIAL COURT ‘Still in his eyes his soul revealing, He dreams not, knows not of concealing, Does all he does with single mind, And thinks of others that are kind.’