"No inclination, either. You were kind to him at all events. It is only to the man who is honest and sincere that you are deliberately uncivil."

"I hope I was uncivil to neither of them."

"There is no use giving yourself that air with me, Joyce. You are angry with me; but why? Only because I am anxious for your happiness. Oh! that hateful man, how I detest him! He has made you unhappy once--he will certainly make you unhappy again."

"I don't think so," says Joyce, taking up her hat and furs with the evident intention of leaving the room, and thus putting an end to the discussion.

"You will never think so until it is too late. You haven't the strength of mind to throw him over, once and for all, and give your thoughts to one who is really worthy of you. On the contrary, you spend your time comparing him favorably with the good and faithful Felix."

"You should put that down. It will do for his tombstone," says Miss Kavanagh, with a rather uncertain little laugh.

"At all events, it would not do for Mr. Beauclerk's tombstone--though I wish it would--and that I could put it there at once."

"I shall tell Freddy to read the commandments to you," says Joyce, with a dreary attempt at mirth--"you have forgotten your duty to your neighbor."

"It is all true, however. You can't deny it, Joyce. You are deliberately--willfully--throwing away the good for the bad. I can't bear to see it. I can't look on in silence and see you thus miserably destroying your life. How can you be so blind, darling?" appealing to her with hands, and voice, and eyes. "Such determined folly would be strange in any one; stranger far in a girl like you, whose sense has always been above suspicion."

"Did it ever occur to you," asks Joyce, in a slightly bantering tone, that but ill conceals the nervousness that is consuming her, "that you might be taking a wrong view of the situation? That I was not so blind after all. That I--What was it you said? that I spent my nights and days comparing the merits of Mr. Beauclerk with those of your friend, Felix Dysart--to your friend's discomfiture? Now, suppose that I did thus waste my time, and gave my veto in favor of Mr. Dysart? How would it be then? It might be so, you know, for all that he, or you, or any one could say."

"It is not so light a matter that you should trifle with it," says Mrs.

Monkton, with a faint suspicion of severity in her soft voice.

"No, of course not. You are right." Miss Kavanagh moves towards the door. "After all, Barbara," looking back at her, "that applies to most things in this sad old world. What matter under heaven can we poor mortals dare to trifle with? Not one, I think. All bear within them the seeds of grief or joy. Sacred seeds, both carrying in their bosoms the germs of eternity. Even when this life is gone from us we still face weal or woe."

"Still--we need not make our own woe," says Barbara, who is a st.u.r.dy enemy to all pessimistic thoughts. "Wait a moment, Joyce." She hurries after her and lays her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Will you come with me next Wednesday to see Lady Monkton?"

"Lady Monkton! Why I thought----"

"Yes, I know. I would not take you there before, because she had not expressly asked to see you. But to-day she made a--she sent you a formal message--at all events she said she hoped I would bring you when I came again."

"Is that all of it?" asks Joyce, gazing at her sister with a curious smile, that is troubled, but has still some growing sense of amus.e.m.e.nt in it. "What an involved statement! Surely you have forgotten something.

That Mr. Dysart was standing near you, for example, and will probably find that it is absolutely imperative that he should call on Lady Monkton next Wednesday, too. Don't set your heart on that, Barbara. I think, after my interview with him to-day, he will not want to see Lady Monkton next Wednesday."

"I know nothing about whether he is to be there or not," says Barbara steadily. "But as Sir George likes to see the children very often, I thought of taking them there on that day. It is Lady Monkton's day. And d.i.c.ky Browne, at all events, will be there, and I dare say a good many of your old friends. Do say you will come."

"I hate old friends!" says the girl fractiously. "I don't believe I have any. I don't believe anybody has. I----"

She pauses as the door is thrown open, and Tommy comes prancing into the room accompanied by his father.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

"Children know very little; but their capacity of comprehension is great."

"I've just been interviewing Tommy on the subject of the pictures," says Mr. Monkton. "So far as I can make out he disapproves of Dore."

"Oh! Tommy! and all such beautiful pictures out of the Bible," says his mother.

"I did like them," says Tommy. "Only some of them were queer. I wanted to know about them, but n.o.body would tell me--and----"

"Why, Tommy, I explained them all to you," says Joyce, reproachfully.

"You did in the first two little rooms and in the big room afterward, where the velvet seats were. They," looking at his father and raising his voice to an indignant note, "wouldn't let me run round on the top of them!"

"Good heavens!" says Mr. Monkton. "Can that be true? Truly this country is going to the dogs."

"Where do the dogs live?" asks Tommy, "What dogs? Why does the country want to go to them?"

"It doesn't want to go," explains his father. "But it will have to go, and the dogs will punish them for not letting you reduce its velvet seats to powder. Never mind, go on with your story; so that unnatural aunt of yours wouldn't tell you about the pictures, eh?"

"She did in the beginning, and when we got into the big room too, a little while. She told me about the great large one at the end, 'Christ and the Historian,' though I couldn't see the Historian anywhere, and----"

"She herself must be a most successful one," says Mr. Monkton, sotto voce.

"And then we came to the Innocents, and I perfectly hated that," says Tommy. "'Twas frightful! Everybody was as large as that," stretching out his arms and puffing out his cheeks, "and the babies were all so fat and so horrid. And then Felix came, and Joyce had to talk to him, so I didn't know any more."

"I think you forget," says Joyce. "There was that picture with lions in it. Mr. Dysart himself explained that to you."

"Oh, that one!" says Tommy, as if dimly remembering, "the circus one!

The one with the round house. I didn't like that either."

"It is rather ghastly for a child," says his mother.

"That's not the one with the gas," puts in Tommy. "The one with the gas is just close to it, and has got Pilate's wife in it. She's very nice."

"But why didn't you like the other?" asks his father. "I think it one of the best there."

"Well, I don't," says Tommy, evidently grieved at having to differ from his father; but filled with a virtuous determination to stick to the truth through thick and thin.

"No?"

"'Tis unfair," says Tommy.

"That has been allowed for centuries," says his father.

"Then why don't they change it?"

"Change what?" asks Mr. Monkton, feeling a little puzzled. "How can one change now the detestable cruelties--or the abominable habits of the dark ages?"

"But why were they dark?" asks Tommy. "Mammy says they had gas then."

"I didn't mean that, I----" his mother is beginning, but Monkton stops her with a despairing gesture.

"Don't," says he. "It would take a good hour by the slowest clock. Let him believe there was electric light then if he chooses."

"Well, but why can't they change it?" persists Tommy, who is evidently full of the picture in question.