He could not understand why Lady Carbury should have refused him! As he reflected upon it, all memory of her son for the moment passed away from him. Full ten minutes had passed, during which he had still stood upon the rug, before he read the entire letter. "'Cut and scotched and lopped!' I suppose she has been," he said to himself. He had heard much of Sir Patrick, and knew well that the old general had been no lamb. "I shouldn't have cut her, or scotched her, or lopped her." When he had read the whole letter patiently there crept upon him gradually a feeling of admiration for her, greater than he had ever yet felt,--and, for awhile, he almost thought that he would renew his offer to her. "'Showers instead of sunshine; melancholy instead of mirth,'" he repeated to himself. "I should have done the best for her, taking the showers and the melancholy if they were necessary." He went to his work in a mixed frame of mind, but certainly without that dragging weight which had oppressed him when he entered the room. Gradually, through the night, he realised the conviction that he had escaped, and threw from him altogether the idea of repeating his offer. Before he left he wrote her a line-- Be it so. It need not break our friendship. N. B. This he sent by a special messenger, who returned with a note to his lodgings long before he was up on the following morning. No;--no; certainly not. No word of this will ever pass my mouth. M. C. Mr. Broune thought that he was very well out of the danger, and resolved that Lady Carbury should never want anything that his friendship could do for her. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE BOARD-ROOM.