"Probably it will never be in print. He toadies my aunt, who likes to be credited with a literary taste, but Cecil says people laugh at him; he is not of any weight, either literary or political, though he has great pretensions. We shall have him for a week at least, and I have no doubt he has brought manuscript to last the whole time." Bessie was so uncomfortably candid as to cry out that she was glad, then, her visit would soon be over; and then she tried to extenuate her plain-speaking, not very skilfully. Miss Burleigh accepted her plea with a gentleness that reproached her: "We hoped that you would be happy at Brentwood with Cecil here; his company is generally supposed to make any place delightful. He is exceedingly dear to us all; no one knows how good he is until they have lived with him a long while." "Oh, I am sure he is good; I like him much better now than I did at first; but if he runs away to Norminster and leaves us a helpless prey to Mr. Logger, that is not delightful," rejoined Bessie winsomely. Miss Burleigh kissed and forgave her, acknowledged that it was the reverse of delightful, and conveyed an intimation to her brother by which he profited. Mr. Logger favored the ladies with another reading on Sunday afternoon--an essay on sermons, and twice as long as one. Mr. Jones should have been there: this essay was much heavier artillery than Miss Hague's little paper-winged arrows. In the middle of it, just at the moment when endurance became agony and release bliss, Mr. Cecil Burleigh entered and invited Miss Fairfax to walk into the town to minster prayers, and Bessie went so gladly that his sister was quite consoled in being left to hear Mr. Logger to an end. The two were about to ascend the minster steps when they espied Mr. Fairfax in the distance, and turned to meet him. He had been lunching with his son. At the first glance Bessie knew that her grandfather had suffered an overwhelming surprise since he went out in the morning. Mr. Cecil Burleigh also perceived that something was amiss, and not to distress his friend by inopportune remark, he said where he and Miss Fairfax were going. "Go--go, by all means," said the squire. "Perhaps you may overtake me as you return: I shall walk slowly, and I want a word with Short as I pass his house." With this he went on, and the young people entered the minster, thinking but not speaking of what they could not but observe--his manifest bewilderment and pre-occupation.