'Her own people don't want her. The Arlingtons are with her now, but I fancy she would rather be sitting with us--or alone best of all, poor dear. You see, she is a mixture of the angel that is too much for some people. How she got it I don't know, not among us, I should think, though she came to us straight out of the schoolroom, or I fancy she would never have come at all. But oh, Lettice, if you could have seen her how patient she has been throughout with my father, reading him all about every race, just because she thought it was less gall and wormwood to her than to me, and going out to the stables to satisfy him about his dear Night Hawk, and all the rest of it. When she was away for that fortnight over poor little Michael, I found to the full what she had been, and then after that, back she comes again, as white as a sheet, but all she ever was to my father, and more wonderful than all, setting herself to reconcile him to the notion of this new heir of his--and I do believe, if my father had not so suddenly grown worse, she would have made us have him up to be introduced--all out of rectitude and duty, you know, for Adela is the shyest of mortals, and recoils by nature from the underbred far more than we do. In fact, I rather like it. It gives me a sensation. I had ten times rather this man were a common sailor, or a tinker, than just a stupid stick of a clerk!' 'Then Adela means to stay at the Dower House?' 'Yes, she has rooted herself there by all her love to her poor people, and I fancy, too, that she does not want to bring Amice up among all the Arlington children, who are not after her pattern, so she intends to bear the brunt of it, and not leave Northmoor, unless the new-comers turn out unbearable.' 'She goes away with her brother now.' 'Oh yes, she must, and Lord Arlington is fond of her in a way! Can't you stay on with me, Lettice?' 'I wish I could, my dear Birdie, but I am anxious about Mary; I don't think I must stay later than Sunday.' 'Yes; you are too devoted a mother for me to absorb. Never mind, you will be in London, and I shall soon be within reach of you. You are a comfortable person, Lettice.' CHAPTER V THE PEER