occasions. And he will not allow himself to be easily driven away. He is
as determined as persons of his class usually are."

"O grandmamma!" protested Lucia, with innocent fervor. "I really do not
think he is--like that at all. I could not help thinking he was very
gentlemanly and kind. He is so much interested in your school, and so
anxious that it should prosper."

"May I ask," inquired Lady Theobald, "how long a time this generous
expression of his sentiments occupied? Was this the reason of your
forgetting the dinner-hour?"

"We did not"--said Lucia guiltily: "it did not take many minutes. I--I do
not think that made me late."

Lady Theobald dismissed this paltry excuse with one remark,--a remark
made in the deep tones referred to once before.

"I should scarcely have expected," she observed, "that a granddaughter of
mine would have spent half an hour conversing on the public road with the
proprietor of Slowbridge Mills."

"O grandmamma!" exclaimed Lucia, the tears rising in her eyes: "it was
not half an hour."

"I should scarcely have expected," replied her ladyship, "that a
granddaughter of mine would have spent five minutes conversing on the
public road with the proprietor of Slowbridge Mills."

To this assault there seemed to be no reply to make. Lady Theobald had