"There is room here, Mr Burge," said Hazel, moving a little farther along the settee, and Mr Chute's ease was complete, for the tea he drank was the most delicious he had ever tasted in his life, and he could have gone on eating bread-and-butter for an hour. He said very little, and Hazel Thorne had to make up for it by chatting pleasantly about the proceedings, till a message came by one of the boys, and Mr Chute was fetched away, leaving the new mistress to the tender mercies of the young squire--at least that is how he put it; but he felt as he told himself, quite a new man. George Canninge came to Hazel's side as soon as Chute had gone, and stood talking to her quietly, and in a way that would have satisfied the most exacting; but he had been dealing with a sensitive plant. At first she had seemed to rejoice in the warmth of his social sunshine, but Mrs Canninge had metaphorically stretched forth a rude hand and touched her leaves, with the result that they shrank and looked withered; and, try as he would, he found her quiet, distant and constrained. "But she can be different," he said to himself as at last Hazel rose, and, crossing to Miss Burge, asked her permission to go. "Oh lor', yes, my dear, go when you think best; for you must be terribly tired." Hazel assured her that she was greatly rested now, and bowing to Mrs Canninge she left the room, without disturbing her mother, who was holding Mr William Forth Burge with an eye, and recounting to him a long, true, and particular account of her early life, the position she had occupied, and the ages and dates of the various illnesses of all her children, including also the fact that her son Percy was growing wonderfully like what his father had been when she first met him at one of the Lord Mayor's balls. "And they do say," sighed Mrs Thorne, "that my daughter is growing greatly like what I used to be." Meanwhile Hazel passed out into the grounds, where she was encountered almost directly by Beatrice Lambent, who, assuming utter ignorance of where the schoolmistress had been, exclaimed-- "Oh, you are there. Miss Thorne. Pray--pray get back to the children. My brother has been astonished at your having left them for so long." People fight with different weapons to those used of old, but they are quite as sharp. CHAPTER TWELVE. TAKEN TO TASK. There was too much sheer hard work at Plumton School for Hazel Thorne to have much time for thoughts of anything but business. She had seen no more of Archibald Graves, but she was never outside the house without feeling nervous and in full expectation of meeting him; but as the days wore on she began to hope that her firm behaviour had not been without its effect.