"Oh, no!" she said; "you will stay till the doctor thinks you are quite able to go, and that will not be to-morrow, or for many to-morrows." "I shall go," he said obstinately, "unless you can treat me as you did up to the day before yesterday. Don't you see that I can't accept your goodness and endure your coldness. I should go, if it meant my death." "There, there," said Aline soothingly. "I shall not be cold to you, and you must stay till you are quite well able to go. I don't suppose Castle Angry would be quite the best place for an invalid." She said it with a deprecating smile. "No," he answered seriously, "I don't think at all that I should get well there. But when I leave here it must be for Castle Angry all the same." So it came that our precautions were set at nought. Aline had told the younger ones who our visitor was, but it had not seemed to impress them very much. We had no hereditary hatred in our veins; and the boys, who listened with delight to his spirited accounts of big football and cricket matches, of the life of a public school, and such things, pronounced him no end of a jolly good fellow, quite irrespective of the fact of his being a De Lacy. The little girls, too, usually so shy and strange, had made friends with him, and played interminable games of dominoes and chess beside his sofa, evening after evening. As he grew stronger and was able to stay up later, his sofa grew to be, in a way, the centre of things in the big drawing-room. We could not very well be at one end and he at the other, and of course we all converged towards the fire, near which his sofa was drawn. There was no doubt at all that he had very attractive ways, gentle, well-bred, and gracious; and we all grew to like him very much indeed. But there were no more of these readings of poetry. I took care of that. I noticed, too, that Esther seemed now to be the one he had least to say to, which pleased me well. After all, that look I had caught that day I read _Maud_ might have meant nothing, or only the strong admiration which Esther must awaken in the breast of anyone with a feeling for beauty. Daily she grew more beautiful. She seemed to glow in the shadowy corners which she always selected for herself, like a deep damask rose half-hidden in leaves. I seemed never to have understood my sister's beauty before. At last Dr. Rivers pronounced our visitor fit to leave us. He had known for some time who the young fellow was, and having, like all the country-side, heard strange stories of Angry, was much pleased that we gave him the freedom of Brandon so long. No word was sent to Sir Rupert of his heir's illness or return. "He has not shown so much solicitude," said the boy, reddening, "that we need consider him in the matter, nor is he likely to find the joy of my return too great a shock."