And here, according to her wont at this meal, the dark-robed Miss Prior entered the room. She was coming forward with her ordinarily erect attitude and firm step, but paused in her walk an instant, and when she came to us, I thought, looked remarkably pale. She made a slight curtsey, and it must be confessed that Captain Baker rose up from his sofa for a moment when she appeared. She then sate down, with her back towards him, turning towards herself the table and its tea apparatus. At this board my Lady Baker found us assembled when she returned from her afternoon drive. She flew to her darling reprobate of a son. She took his hand, she smoothed back his hair from his damp forehead. “My darling child,” cries this fond mother, “what a pulse you have got!” “I suppose, because I’ve been drinking,” says the prodigal. “Why didn’t you come out driving with me? The afternoon was lovely!” “To pay visits at Richmond? Not as I knows on, ma’am,” says the invalid. “Conversation with elderly ladies about poodles, bible-societies, that kind of thing? It must be a doocid lovely afternoon that would make me like that sort of game.” And here comes a fit of coughing, over which mamma ejaculates her sympathy. “Kick—kick—killin’ myself!” gasps out the captain, “know I am. No man can lead my life, and stand it. Dyin’ by inches! Dyin’ by whole yards, by Jo—ho—hove, I am!” Indeed, he was as bad in health as in morals, this graceless captain. “That man of Lovel’s seems a d—— insolent beggar,” he presently and ingenuously remarks. “O uncle, you mustn’t say those words!” cries niece Cissy. “He’s a man, and may say what he likes, and so will I, when I’m a man. Yes, and I’ll say it now, too, if I like,” cries Master Popham. “Not to give me pain, Popham? Will you?” asks the governess. On which the boy says,—“Well, who wants to hurt you, Miss Prior?” And our colloquy ends by the arrival of the man of the house from the city. What I have admired in some dear women is their capacity for quarrelling and for reconciliation. As I saw Lady Baker hanging round her son’s neck, and fondling his scanty ringlets, I remembered the awful stories with which in former days she used to entertain us regarding this reprobate. Her heart was pincushioned with his filial crimes. Under her chesnut front her ladyship’s real head of hair was grey, in consequence of his iniquities. His precocious appetite had devoured the greater part of her jointure. He had treated her many dangerous illnesses with indifference: had been the worst son, the worst brother, the most ill-conducted school-boy, the most immoral young man—the terror of households, the Lovelace of garrison towns, the perverter of young officers; in fact, Lady Baker did not know how she supported existence at all under the agony occasioned by his crimes, and it was only from the possession of a more than ordinarily strong sense of religion that she was enabled to bear her burden.