The ladies went in a cab, while the gentlemen walked. There was not much time to spare, and in the compartment into which the first comers threw themselves, they found both the Hacket sisters installed, and the gentlemen coming up in haste, nodded and got into a smoking-carriage, on seeing how theirs was occupied. ‘Oh, we could have made room,’ said Constance, to whom a gentleman was a gentleman under whatever circumstances. ‘Dear Miss Dolores’s papa! Is it indeed?’ said Miss Hacket. ‘So wonderfully interesting,’ chimed in Constance. And they both made a dart at Dolores to kiss her in congratulation, much against her will. The train clattered on, and Lady Merrifield hoped it would hush all other voices, but neither of the Hackets could refrain from discussing the trial, and heaping such unmitigated censure on the counsel for the prisoner, that Miss Mohun felt herself constrained to fly in the face of all she had said at the hotel, and to maintain the right of even such an Englishman to be defended, and of his advocate to prevent his conviction if possible. On which the regular sentiment against becoming lawyers was produced, and the subject might have been dropped if Constance had not broken out again, as if she could not leave it. ‘So atrocious, so abominably insolent, asking if he was unmarried.’ ‘Evidently flattered!’ muttered Aunt Jane, between her teeth, and unheard; but the speed slackened, and Constance’s voice went on, ‘I really thought I should have died of it on the spot. The bare idea of thinking I could endure such a being.’ ‘Well,’ said Dolores, just as the clatter ceased at a little station. ‘You know you did walk up and down with him ever so long, and I am sure you liked him very much.’ An indignant ‘You don’t understand’ was absolutely cut off by an imperative grasp and hush from Miss Hacket the elder; Aunt Jane was suffocating with laughter, Lady Merrifield, between that and a certain shame for womanhood, which made her begin to talk at random about anything or everything else. CHAPTER XXII. -- NAY. ‘What a mull they have made of it!’ were Mr. Maurice Mohun’s first words when he found the compartment free for a tete-a-tete with his brother. ‘All’s well that ends well,’ was the brief reply. ‘Well, indeed! Mary would not have thought so.’ To which the colonel had nothing to say. ‘It serves me out,’ his brother went on presently. ‘I ought to have done something for that wretched fellow before I went, or, at any rate, have put Dolly on her guard; but I always shirked the very thought of him.’ ‘Nothing would have kept him out of harm’s way.’ ‘It might have kept the child; but she must have been thicker with him than I ever knew. However I shall have her with me for the future, and in better hands.’ ‘You really mean to take her out?’ ‘That’s what brought me home. She isn’t happy; that is plain from her letters; and Jane does not know what to make of her, nor Lilias either.’