some fellows that I dine with, out at Hampstead, or Richmond, or
Blackwell, every Sunday. Nothing wicked, I assure you. And you know
it's capital for one's health to get a Sunday in fresh air."

"Yes; but Aunt Johanna will be sorry to miss you."

"Will she? Oh, you'll smooth her down. Stay! Tell her I shall be back
to tea."

"We shall be having tea directly."

"I declare I had quite forgotten. Aunt Hilary, you must change your
hours. They don't suit me at all. No men can ever stand early
dinners. By, by! You are the very prettiest auntie. Be sure you get
home safe. Hollo, there! That's my omnibus."

He jumped on the top of it, and was off.

Aunt Hilary stood quite confounded, and with one of those strange
sinkings of the heart which had come over her several times this day.
It was not that Ascott showed any unkindness--that there was any
actual badness in his bright and handsome young face. Still there was
a want there--want of earnestness, steadfastness, truthfulness, a
something more discoverable as the lack of something else than as
aught in itself tangibly and perceptibly wrong. It made her sad; it
caused her to look forward to his future with an anxious heart. It
was so different from the kind of anxiety, and yet settled repose,
with which she thought of the only other man in whose future she felt
the smallest interest. Of Robert Lyon, she was certain that whatever
misfortune visited him he would bear it in the best way it could be