If Miss Charity had been either suspicious or romantic, she would have seen by a glance at the young people's faces what had happened; but being neither, and quite pre-occupied with her theory about Cleve Verney, and having never dreamed of Tom Sedley as possibly making his _début_ at Hazelden in the character of a lover--she brought her prisoners home with only a vague sense now and then that there was either something a little odd in their manner or in her own perceptions, and she remarked, looking a little curiously at Tom, in reference to some query of hers,-- "I've asked you that question twice without an answer, and now you say something totally unmeaning." CHAPTER VI. TOM HAS A "TALK" WITH THE ADMIRAL. "WILL _you_ tell her?" whispered Sedley to Agnes. "Oh, no. Do _you_," she entreated. They both looked at Charity, who was preparing the little dog's supper of bread and milk in a saucer. "I'll go in and see papa, and you shall speak to her," said Agnes. Which Tom Sedley did, so much to her amazement that she set the saucer down on the table beside her, and listened, and conversed for half an hour; and the poodle's screams, and wild jumping and clawing at her elbow, at last reminded her that he had been quite forgotten. So, while its mistress was apologising earnestly to poor Bijou, and superintending his attentions to the bread and milk, now placed upon the floor, in came Agnes, and up got Charity, and kissed her with a frank, beaming smile, and said,-- "I'm _excessively_ glad, Agnes. I was always _so_ fond of Thomas Sedley; and I _wonder_ we never thought of it before." They were all holding hands in a ring by this time. "And what do you think Mr. Etherage will say?" inquired Tom. "Papa! why of _course_ he will be _delighted_," said Miss Charity. "He likes you _extremely_." "But you know, Agnes might do so much better. She's such a treasure, there's no one that would not be proud of her, and no one could help falling in love with her, and the Ad---- I mean Mr. Etherage, may think me so presumptuous; and, you know, he may think me quite too poor." "If you mean to say that papa would object to you because you have only four hundred a year, you think most meanly of him. I know _I_ should not like to be connected with anybody that I thought so meanly of, because that kind of thing I look upon as really _wicked_; and I should be sorry to think papa was wicked. I'll go in and tell him all that has happened this moment." In an awful suspense, pretty Agnes and Tom Sedley, with her hand in both his, stood side by side, looking earnestly at the double door which separated them from this conference. In a few minutes they heard Vane Etherage's voice raised to a pitch of testy bluster, and then Miss Charity's rejoinder with shrill emphasis. "Oh! gracious goodness! he's very angry. What shall we do?" exclaimed poor little Agnes, in wild helplessness.