him to enter the army “as a fellow ought,” and of whom he promised never to be ashamed. It is much to be doubted whether Lottie had any warm sense of humour at the best of times; certainly she showed herself quite devoid of it now. She was so hurt and sore that she could not speak. It was not true. How could he be so cruel and unjust to her? But yet could it be at all true? Was it possible that this coarse picture was like Lottie, would be taken for Lottie by anyone else? She kept looking at him after he had stopped speaking, unable to take her eyes from him, looking like a dumb creature who has no other power of remonstrance. Perhaps in other circumstances Lottie would have been so foolish and childish as to cry; now she battled vaguely, dismally, with a sense of heartbreaking injustice, yet asking herself could any part of it be true? “Don’t stare at me so,” said Law; “you look as if you had never seen a fellow before. Though he was civil and did not say anything, it was easy to see that was what old Ashford thought. And I’ve got to go back to him to-morrow, if that will please you; and, by the way, he said he’d perhaps come and see you and tell you what he thought. By Jove, it’s getting late. If I don’t get out at once he’ll come and palaver, and I shall have to stay in and lose my afternoon, as I lost the morning. I’m off, Lottie. You need not wait for me for tea.” It did not make much difference to her when he went away, plunging down the little staircase in two or three long steps. Lottie sat like an image in stone, all the strength taken from her. She seemed to have nothing left to say to herself--no ground to stand on, no self-explanation to offer. She had exhausted all her power of self-assertion for the moment; now she paused and looked at herself as her father and brother saw her--a hard, scanty, parsimonious housekeeper, keeping them on the simplest fare, denying them indulgences, standing in their way. What if she kept the house, as she fondly hoped, like a gentleman’s house, sweet and fresh, and as fair as its faded furniture permitted? What did they care for tidiness and order? What if she managed, by infinite vigilance and precaution, to pay her bills and keep the credit of the household, so far as her power went, unimpaired? They did not mind debts and duns, except at the mere moment of encountering the latter, and were entirely indifferent to the credit of the name. She was in her father’s way, who before this time would have married the woman who brushed past Lottie on the Slopes but for having this useless grown-up daughter, whom he did not know how to dispose of; and if Law got an appointment (that almost impossible, yet fondly cherished, expectation which had kept a sort of forlorn brightness in the future), it now turned out that she would be in Law’s way as much or more than in her father’s. Lottie’s heart contracted with pain; her spirit failed her. She, who had felt so strong, so capable, so