"I was never more serious in my life, child. Lady Drelincourt is not young, but she is a most amiable woman, with no other weakness than a love for play." "And little beasts of dogs," said Morton contemptuously. "Of course, because there is a void in her womanly heart. That void, my son, you must try and fill." "Oh, nonsense, father!" "Nonsense! Morton, are you mad? Are you going to throw away a fortune, and a great position in society? Of course, I do not say that such an event will follow, but it is time you began to assert your position. You did well the other day on the pier." "Yes," said Morton with a sneer. "I fished out a dog. Now Dick Linnell did something worth--" "Silence, sir! Do not mention his name in my presence, I beg," said the old man sternly; and he left the house. "Well, I tell you what it is, Sis," said Morton, speaking from the window, where he had gone to see his father mince by, "the old dad hasn't been right since that night. I think he's going off his head." There was no reply, and, turning round, it was to find that he was alone, for Claire, unable to bear the strain longer, had glided from the room. Volume One, Chapter XIX. MISS CLODE'S HERO. No one would have called Miss Clode pretty, "but there were traces," as the Master of the Ceremonies said. She was thin and middle-aged now, but she had once been a very charming woman; and, though the proprietress of the circulating library at Saltinville, a keen observer would have said that she was a lady. Richard Linnell entered her shop on the morning after the carriage accident, and a curious flush came into her little thin face. There was a light in her eye that seemed to make the worn, jaded face pleasanter to look upon, and it seemed as if something of the little faded woman's true nature was peeping out. She did not look like the little go-between in scores of flirtations and intrigues; but as if the natural love of her nature had come to the surface, from where it generally lay latent, and her eyes seemed to say: "Ah, if I could have married, and had a son like that." It is the fashion, nowadays, for ladies to attempt a strong-minded _role_, and profess to despise the tyrant man; to take to college life and professorship; to cry aloud and shout for woman's rights and independence; for votes and the entry to the school board, vestry, and the Parliamentary bench; when all the time Nature says in her gentle but inflexible way: "Foolish women; it was not for these things that you were made to tread the earth." Study! Yes, nothing is too abstruse, nowadays. The pretty maidens, who used to learn a little French with their music and drawing, now take to Greek and Latin and the higher mathematics, but they cannot stitch like their grandmothers. "And," says a strong-minded lady, "are they any worse companions now for men than they were then?"