"Answer me without further trifling," sternly resumed Mr. Thornycroft, putting his hand on her shoulder. The tone sobered her. "Of course, papa; if some one must come, why, let it be Lady Ellis." Heaving a sort of relieved sigh, he released her, and she went away singing to herself a scrap of a pretty little French song, the refrain of which was, rendered in English--"If you come today, madam, you go tomorrow." The misapprehension that arises in this world! None of us are perfectly open one with the other. Between the husband and the wife, the parents and the children, the brothers and the sisters, involuntary deceit reigns. Mr. Thornycroft assumed that Lady Ellis would be more acceptable to his daughter as a resident at the Red Court than any one else that could be found: had Miss Thornycroft spoken the truth boldly, she would have said that my Lady Ellis was her _bête noire_; the person she most disliked of all others on earth. But the chief question was not solved yet in the mind of Justice Thornycroft. Should it be wife, or should it be only companion? He was quite sufficiently taken with my lady's fascinations to render the first alternative sufficiently agreeable in prospective; he deemed her a soft-hearted, yielding gentlewoman; he repeated over again to himself the mysterious words, "As a wife she would be less dangerous than a companion." But still, there were considerations against it that made him hesitate. And with good cause. He went strolling towards the village, turning down the waste land, a right of way that was his own, past the plateau. The first house, at the corner of the street, was the Mermaid. He passed the end of it, and struck across to a low commodious cottage on the cliffs, whose rooms were all on the ground-floor. Tomlett lived in it; he was called the fishing-boat master, and was also employed occasionally on the farm of Mr. Thornycroft, as he had leisure. Mrs. Tomlett, a little woman with a red face and shrill voice, was hanging out linen on the lines to dry. "Where's Tomlett today?" asked the justice. "He has not been to the farm." Mrs. Tomlett turned sharply round, for she had not heard the approach, and dropped a curtsey to the justice. "He have gone to Dartfield, sir," she answered, lowering her voice to the key people use when talking secrets. "Mr. Richard he come in the first thing this morning and sent him." Mr. Thornycroft nodded, and went away, muttering to himself exclusively something to the effect that Richard might have mentioned it. Passing round by the Mermaid again, he went towards home. And he was charmingly rewarded. Standing on the waste land near the plateau, in her pretty and becoming bonnet of delicate primrose and white, her Indian shawl folded gracefully round her, her dress looped, was Lady Ellis. "Do you know, Mr. Thornycroft," she said, as he took her hand, "I have never been on the plateau. Will you take me?"