that they will keep her long. She'll wear the gaolers out; she will
wear the walls out; she will wear 'it' down to the bone; and then they
will let her loose upon the world again. Why, there is the bell for
lunch, and not a single green fly the less! Never mind, I will do for
them to-morrow. How it would add to her sufferings in her lonely cell
if she could see us going to a _tete-a-tete_ lunch. Come on, Philip,
come quick, or the cutlets will get cold, and I hate cold cutlets."
And off she tripped, followed by the laughing Philip, who, by the way,
was now looking quite handsome again.

Maria Lee was not very pretty at her then age--just eighteen--but she
was a perfect specimen of a young English country girl; fresh as a
rose, and sound as a bell, and endowed besides with a quick wit and a
ready sympathy. She was essentially one of that class of Englishwomen
who make the English upper middle class what it is--one of the finest
and soundest in the world. Philip, following her into the house,
thought that she was charming; nor, being a Caresfoot, and therefore
having a considerable eye to the main chance, did the fact of her
being the heiress to fifteen hundred a year in land detract from her
charms.

The cutlets were excellent, and Maria ate three, and was very comical
about the departed Grumps; indeed, anybody not acquainted with the
circumstances would have gathered that that excellent lady was to be
shortly put to the question. Philip was not quite so merry; he was
oppressed both by recollections of what had happened and apprehensions
of what might happen.

"What is the matter, Philip?" she asked, when they had left the table
to sit under the trees on the lawn. "I can see that something is the