company to be met in Bawtry, Doncaster and the country around Wroote.

This promise had not been fulfilled, and Emilia's temper had soured
in consequence. Nor had the Rector's debts melted at the rate
expected. The weight of them still oppressed him and all the
household: but Mrs. Wesley knew in her heart that, were poverty the
only reason, Hetty need not go. Hetty knew it, too, and rebelled.
She was happy at Wroote; happier at least than she would be at
Kelstein. She did not wish to be selfish: she would go, if one of
the sisters must. But why need any of them go?

She asked her mother this, and Mrs. Wesley fenced with the question
while hardening her heart. In truth she feared what might happen if
Hetty stayed. They had made some new acquaintances at Wroote and at
Bawtry there was a lover, a young lawyer . . . a personable young
man, reputed to be clever in his profession. . . . Mrs. Wesley knew
nothing to his discredit . . . and sure, Hetty's face might attract
any lover. So her thoughts ran, without blaming the girl, whose
heart she believed to be engaged, though she could not tell how
deeply. But the Rector must be considered, and he had taken an
instant and almost frantic dislike for the youth. There was nothing
unusual in this: for, like many another uxorious man (with all his
faults of temper he was uxorious), Mr. Wesley hated that anyone
should offer love to his daughters. This antipathy of his had been a
nuisance for ten years past; since the girls were, when all was said,
honest healthy girls with an instinct for mating, and not to be
blamed for making their best of the suitors which Epworth and its
neighbourhood provided. But since Sukey's marriage it had deepened
into something like a mania, and now, in Hetty's case, flared up with
a passion incomprehensible if not quite insane. He declared his