'I advise you to follow Lily's example and make the best of it,' said William.

'I do, but it is another thing to stand laughing here. I see one thing that I shall do--I shall take away your picture and hang it in my room.'

'We shall see,' said William, following Lilias, who had left the room to hide her laughter.

To mystify Jane was the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the day; Reginald, finding Maurice possessed with the same notion, did more to maintain it than the others would have thought right, and Maurice reporting his speeches to Jane, she had not the least doubt that her idea was correct. Lord Rotherwood came to dinner, and no sooner had he entered the drawing-room than Reginald, rejoicing in the absence of the parties concerned, informed him of the joke, much to his diversion, though rather to the discomfiture of the more prudent spectators, who might have wished it confined to themselves.

'It has gone far enough,' said Claude; 'she will say something she will repent if we do not take care.'

'I should like to reduce her to humble herself to ask an explanation from Marianne,' said Lily.

'And pray don't spoil the joke before I have enjoyed it,' said Lord Rotherwood. 'My years of discretion are not such centuries of wisdom as those of that gentleman who looks as grim as his namesake the Emperor on a coin.'

The entrance of Eleanor and Jane here put an end to the conversation, which was not renewed till the evening, when the younger, or as Claude called it, the middle-aged part of the company were sitting on the lawn, leaving the drawing-room to the elder and more prudent, and the terrace to the wilder and more active. Emily was talking of Mrs.

Burnet's visit of the day before, and her opinion of the Hetherington festivities. 'And what an interminable visit it was,' said Jane; 'I thought they would never go!'

'People always inflict themselves in a most merciless manner when there is anything going on,' said Emily.

'I wonder if they guessed anything,' said Lily.

'To be sure they did, and stayed out of curiosity,' said Lord Rotherwood. 'In spite of Emily's dignified contradictions of the report, every one knew it the other evening. It was all in vain that she behaved as if I was speaking treason--people have eyes.'

'Ah! I am very sorry for that contradiction,' said Lily; 'I hope people will not fancy we do not like it.'

'No, it will only prove my greatness,' said Lord Rotherwood. 'Your Marques, was China in the map, so absorbing all beholders that the magnanimous Mohuns themselves--'

'What nonsense, Rotherwood,' said Jane, sharply; 'can't you suppose that one may shut one's eyes to what one does not wish to see.'

The singular inappropriateness of this answer occasioned a general roar of laughter, and she looked in perplexity. Every one whom she asked why they laughed replied by saying, 'Ask Marianne Weston;' and at length, after much puzzling and guessing, and being more laughed at than had ever before happened to her in her life, she was obliged to seek an explanation from Marianne, who might well have triumphed had she been so disposed. Jane's character for penetration was entirely destroyed, and the next morning she received, as a present from Claude, an old book, which had long belonged to the nursery, ent.i.tled, A Puzzle for a Curious Girl.

CHAPTER XXVII: CONCLUSION

'There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, And mask, and antique pageantry; Such sights as useful poets dream On summer eves, by haunted stream.'

On the morning of a fine day, late in September, the Beechcroft bells were ringing merrily, and a wedding procession was entering the gate of the churchyard.

In the afternoon there was a great feast on the top of the hill, attended by all the Mohuns, who were forced, to Lily's great satisfaction, to give it there, as there was no s.p.a.ce in the grounds at the New Court. All was wonderfully suitable to old times, inasmuch as the Baron was actually persuaded to sit for five minutes under the yew-tree where 'Mohun's chair' ought to have been, and the cricketers were of all ranks, from the Marquis of Rotherwood to little d.i.c.k Grey.

The wedding had been hurried on, and the wedding tour was shortened, in order that Mrs. William Mohun might be installed as mistress of the New Court before Eleanor's departure, which took place early in October; and shortly after Mrs. Ridley, who had come on a visit to Beechcroft, to take leave of her brother, returned to the north, taking with her the little Harry. He was nearly a year old, and it gave great pain to his young aunts to part with him, now that he had endeared himself to them by many engaging ways, but Lily felt herself too unequal to the task of training him up to make any objection, and there were many promises that he should not be a stranger to his grandfather's home.

Mrs. and Miss Aylmer had been about a month settled at a superior sort of cottage, near the New Court, with Mrs. Eden for their servant. Lord Rotherwood had fitted out the second son, who sailed for India with Mr. and Mrs. Hawkesworth, had sent Devereux to school, and was lying in wait to see what could be done for the two others, and Jane was congratulated far more than she wished, on having been the means of discovering such an excellent governess. Jane was now a regular inhabitant of the schoolroom, as much tied down to lessons and schoolroom hours as her two little sisters, with the prospect of so continuing for two years, if not for three. She made one attempt to be pert to Miss Aylmer; but something in the manner of her governess quite baffled her, and she was obliged to be more obedient than she had ever been. The mischief which Emily and Lilias had done to her, by throwing off their allegiance to Eleanor, and thus unconsciously leading her to set her at nought, was, at her age, not to be so easily repaired; yet with no opportunity for gossiping, and with involuntary respect for her governess, there were hopes that she would lose the habit of her two great faults. There certainly was an improvement in her general tone and manner, which made Mr. Devereux hope that he might soon resume with her the preparation for confirmation which had been cut short the year before.

Phyllis and Adeline had been possessed by Reginald with a great dread of governesses; and they were agreeably surprised in Miss Aylmer, whom they found neither cross nor strict, and always willing to forward their amus.e.m.e.nts, and let them go out with their papa and sisters whenever they were asked. Phyllis, without much annoyance to one so obedient, was trained into more civilisation, and Ada's more serious faults were duly watched and guarded against. The removal of Esther was a great advantage to Ada; an older and more steady person was taken in her place; while to the great relief of Mr. Mohun and Lilias, Rachel Harvey took Esther to her brother's farmhouse, where she promised to watch and teach her, and hoped in time to make her a good servant.

Of Emily there is little to say. She ate, drank, and slept, talked agreeably, read idle books, and looked nice in the drawing-room, wasting time, throwing away talents, weakening the powers of her mind, and laying up a store of sad reflections for herself against the time when she must awake from her selfish apathy.

As to Lilias Mohun, the heroine of this tale, the history of the formation of her character has been told, and all that remains to be said of her is, that the memory of her faults and her sorrows did not fleet away like a morning cloud, though followed by many happy and prosperous days, and though the effects of many were repaired.

Agnes's death, Esther's theft, Ada's accident, the schism in the parish, and her own numerous mistakes, were constantly recalled, and never without a thought of the danger of being wise above her elders, and taking mere feeling for Christian charity.