"You'd better talk to Gazebee about the trifle of money you've got," said the earl. Then he dismissed the subject from his mind, and no doubt imagined that he had fully done his duty by his daughter. On the day after this, Crosbie was to go. On the last afternoon, shortly before dinner, he was waylaid by Lady Julia, who had passed the day in preparing traps to catch him. "Mr. Crosbie," she said, "let me have one word with you. Is this true?" "Lady Julia," he said, "I really do not know why you should inquire into my private affairs." "Yes, sir, you do know; you know very well. That poor young lady who has no father and no brother, is my neighbour, and her friends are my friends. She is a friend of my own, and being an old woman, I have a right to speak for her. If this is true, Mr. Crosbie, you are treating her like a villain." "Lady Julia, I really must decline to discuss the matter with you." "I'll tell everybody what a villain you are; I will, indeed;--a villain and a poor weak silly fool. She was too good for you; that's what she was." Crosbie, as Lady Julia was addressing to him the last words, hurried upstairs away from her, but her ladyship, standing on a landing-place, spoke up loudly, so that no word should be lost on her retreating enemy. "We positively must get rid of that woman," the countess, who heard it all, said to Margaretta. "She is disturbing the house and disgracing herself every day." "She went to papa this morning, mamma." "She did not get much by that move," said the countess. On the following morning Crosbie returned to town, but just before he left the castle he received a third letter from Lily Dale. "I have been rather disappointed at not hearing this morning," said Lily, "for I thought the postman would have brought me a letter. But I know you'll be a better boy when you get back to London, and I won't scold you. Scold you, indeed! No; I'll never scold you, not though I shouldn't hear for a month." He would have given all that he had in the world, three times told, if he could have blotted out that visit to Courcy Castle from the past facts of his existence. CHAPTER XXV. ADOLPHUS CROSBIE SPENDS AN EVENING AT HIS CLUB. [ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)] Crosbie, as he was being driven from the castle to the nearest station, in a dog-cart hired from the hotel, could not keep himself from thinking of that other morning, not yet a fortnight past, on which he had left Allington; and as he thought of it he knew that he was a villain. On this morning Alexandrina had not come out from the house to watch his departure, and catch the last glance of his receding figure. As he had not started very early she had sat with him at the breakfast-table; but others also had sat there, and when he got up to go, she did no more than smile softly and give him her hand. It had been already settled that he was to spend his Christmas at Courcy; as it had been also settled that he was to spend it at Allington.