At the end of ten days, Mrs. Ashton returned to Manchester, leaving the girls behind. She had extorted a promise from Augusta that she would not write to Mr. Laurence Aspinall, and relied on that promise being faithfully kept. Moreover, after some debate with herself, as they walked from the mill together on the last afternoon of her stay, she committed her daughter and niece to Jabez Clegg’s care. “You are a very young man for so important a charge,” she said, “but you are steady as old Time, and of your integrity and fidelity we have had many proofs. Miss Ashton’s health demands a prolonged stay on this breezy hill-side, but I fear she feels it dull after Manchester. If you will endeavour to amuse her when you see her drooping, I shall consider myself your debtor, sir; and should anything _unusual_ attract your notice, I depend on your calling our attention to it.” “I feel honoured by the trust you repose in me, madam,” replied he, a grave consciousness of his own danger stirring at his heart; “you may depend on my watchfulness over Miss Ashton and her cousin.” But of any danger to Miss Ashton beyond that arising from a sensitively delicate frame, which might need the sudden summons of Dr. Hull to allay the fears of parents anxious for their only child, he had no suspicion or perception. He had no more clue to Mrs. Ashton’s hidden meaning than she to his secret emotions. It had been wiser to have been more explicit. Without that charge he might have made it a point of honour, if not of duty, to hold aloof from the young ladies lest he should be obtrusive: as it was, the more he pondered, the more he became satisfied that it was only a delicate way of giving sanction to a companionship he might otherwise have regarded as presumptuous. Accordingly, he constituted himself their cavalier after business hours, fulfilling to the letter his instructions to endeavour to amuse Augusta whenever he found her drooping, well rewarded if he could win back a smile or a peal of the rippling laughter he had heard so oft in her school-girl days. His attentions to Miss Chadwick were tinctured with the profoundest respect, but there was no effort to entertain or be agreeable; on the contrary, it was Miss Chadwick who kept the light shafts of her cousin’s wit within bounds when they were likely to wound—as they did sometimes. The White Hart, to Sim’s disquiet, would have suffered long from dearth of herbage, had not thunderous clouds emptied their reservoirs amongst the hills, until brooks became rivers, and roads almost impassable. Then Jabez resumed his brush, Sim clapped his thin little hands with delight, whilst the sedate young lady of twenty-four, and the bewitching damsel of sweet seventeen, varied the monotony of piano, book, or embroidery-frame, with an occasional criticism of his work.