certain sentimental relations which had, it may be, once existed between
him and Miss Lake; and he was a person of that combative temperament that
magnifies an object in proportion as its pursuit is thwarted.

In the drawing-room he watched Miss Lake over his cup of coffee, and
after a few words to his _fiancee_ he lounged toward the table at which
she was turning over some prints.

'Do come here, Dorothy,' she exclaimed, not raising her eyes, 'I have
found the very thing.'

'What thing? my dear Miss Lake,' said that good little woman, skipping to
her side.

'The story of "Fridolin," and Retzch's pretty outlines. Sit down beside
me, and I'll tell you the story.'

'Oh!' said the vicar's wife, taking her seat, and the inspection and
exposition began; and Mark Wylder, who had intended renewing his talk
with Miss Lake, saw that she had foiled him, and stood with a heightened
colour and his hands in his pockets, looking confoundedly cross and very
like an outcast, in the shadow behind.

After a while, in a pet, he walked away. Lord Chelford had joined the two
ladies, and had something to say about German art, and some pleasant
lights to throw from foreign travel, and devious reading, and was as
usual intelligent and agreeable; and Mark was still more sore and angry,
and strutted away to another table, a long way off, and tossed over the
leaves of a folio of Wouverman's works, and did not see one of the plates
he stared at so savagely.