The girl had eyed her coldly, incredulously. "What? That dreadful man your uncle?" she had exclaimed: she herself was the daughter of a church dignitary. "I should say I did know him--by reputation at least. And it's quite enough, thank you." Now Laura had understood that Uncle Tom--he needed but a pair of gold earrings to pose as the model for a Spanish Grandee--that Uncle Tom WAS odd, in this way: he sometimes took more to drink than was good for him; but she had never suspected him of being "dreadful", or a byword in Wantabadgery. Colouring to the roots of her hair, she murmured something about him of course not being recognised by the rest of the family; but M. P., she was sure, had never looked on her with the same eyes again. Such was the rigid young moralist into whose hands her fate was given. She sat and meditated these things, in spiritless fashion. She would have to confess to her fabrications--that was plain. M. P.'s precise mind would bring back a precise account of how matters stood in the Shepherd household: not by an iota would the truth be swerved from. Why, oh why, had she not foreseen this possibility? What evil spirit had prompted her and led her on?--But, before her brain could contemplate the awful necessity of rising and branding herself as a liar, it sought desperately for a means of escape. For a wink, she even nursed the idea of dragging in a sham man, under the pretence that Mr. Shepherd had been but a blind, used by her to screen some one else. But this yarn, twist it as she might, would not pass muster. Against it was the mass of her accumulated detail. She sat there, devising scheme after scheme. Not one of them would do. When, at tea-time, she rose to wash her face before going downstairs, the sole point on which she had come to clearness was, that just seven days lay between her and detection.--Yet after all, she reminded herself, seven days made a week, and a week was a good long time. Perhaps something would happen between now and Saturday. M. P. might have an accident and break her leg, and not be able to go. Or thin, poorly-fed Mr. Shepherd fall ill from overwork.--Oh, how she would rejoice to hear of it! And, if the worst came to the worst and she HAD to tell, at least it should not be to-day. To-day was Sunday; and people's thoughts were frightfully at liberty. To-morrow they would be engaged again; and, by to-morrow, she herself would have grown more accustomed to the idea.--Besides, how foolish to have been in too great a hurry, should something come to pass that rendered confession needless.