The squire's eye twinkled with suppressed merriment. "Oh no," he said in a determined tone, "I couldn't afford to lose Miss Hood. For Lucy's sake," he added maliciously. The lady fanned herself. There are limits to the endurance of long-suffering woman. Mrs. Dodd felt that she was being trampled on. The sensation was new to her, and unpleasant. "You appear to cling to her, squire," she said. "Naturally, naturally," answered the squire, "so do the girls. She has been more than a mother to them." "Why not make her so in reality?" retorted the exasperated woman, losing her head. Here the fanning became more furious. "The fact is, Mrs. Dodd," said the squire, "I have been screwing myself up to that point for the last dozen years, but I am close on the age of the patriarchs, and I don't think she'd have me. If you are of a different opinion, Mrs. Dodd, I will reconsider the matter; of course it would be most appropriate. There's no fool like an old fool, I suppose." Was the seemingly innocent squire referring to himself, or had this abominable old gentleman the temerity to allude to the wife of the vicar of King's Warren as "an old fool?" Who shall say? "Do you seriously advise it?" went on her tormentor; "do you think I may dare to hope?" But the vicar's wife answered him never a word. He rose to go and shook hands with her in his usual hearty manner. By no outward sign did Mrs. Dodd manifest her indignation, but when the squire had left the room she sank into her chair and burst into tears. "The serpent!" she ejaculated as she pressed her handkerchief to her streaming eyes. Not one word did Mrs. Dodd utter for many days to her husband of her momentous conversation with the squire. In a statuesque attitude, she sat, like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, or Patience on a monument smiling at grief. And then she thought with horror of the confidence she had made to old Mrs. Wurzel and the brewer's daughter, not an hour before. _On a tiré le vin, il faut payer la bouteille._ CHAPTER X. ROME.--THE BALLO PAPAYANI. The party had been in Rome three weeks, they had all thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and Georgie Haggard had made no objection whatever to her husband's putting in an appearance at the Ballo Papayani. The great Carnival ball had been for years one of the sights of Rome. Although the red English guide-book merely discreetly remarked that "the scene at Papayani's at Carnival time should on no account be missed," Baedeker and the other foreign mentors devoted whole pages to glowing descriptions of these more than Olympian revels.