his horse, he said to the stable-man,--'Oh! by the way, here's a letter
for Mr. Coxe. Don't send it through the women; take it round yourself
to the surgery-door, and do it at once.'

The slight smile upon his face, as he rode out of the gates, died away
as soon as he found himself in the solitude of the lanes. He slackened
his speed, and began to think. It was very awkward, he considered, to
have a motherless girl growing up into womanhood in the same house with
two young men, even if she only met them at meal-times; and all the
intercourse they had with each other was merely the utterance of such
words as, 'May I help you to potatoes?' or, as Mr. Wynne would
persevere in saying, 'May I assist you to potatoes?'--a form of speech
which grated daily more and more upon Mr. Gibson's cars. Yet Mr. Coxe,
the offender in this affair which had just occurred, had to remain for
three years more as a pupil in Mr Gibson's family. He should be the
very last of the race. Still there were three years to be got over; and
if this stupid passionate calf-love of his lasted, what was to be done?
Sooner or later Molly would become aware of it. The contingencies of
the affair were so excessively disagreeable to contemplate, that Mr.
Gibson determined to dismiss the subject from his mind by a good strong
effort. He put his horse to a gallop, and found that the violent
shaking over the lanes--paved as they were with round stones, which had
been dislocated by the wear and tear of a hundred years--was the very
best thing for the spirits, if not for the bones. He made a long round
that afternoon, and came back to his home imagining that the worst was
over, and that Mr. Coxe would have taken the hint conveyed in the
prescription. All that would be needed was to find a safe place for the
unfortunate Bethia, who had displayed such a daring aptitude for
intrigue. But Mr. Gibson reckoned without his host. It was the habit of
the young men to come in to tea with the family in the dining-room, to