'Evidently flattered!' muttered Aunt Jane, between her teeth, and unheard; but the speed slackened, and Constance's voice went on,

'I really thought I should have died of it on the spot. The bare idea of thinking I could endure such a being.'

'Well,' said Dolores, just as the clatter ceased at a little station.

'You know you did walk up and down with him ever so long, and I am sure you liked him very much.'

An indignant 'You don't understand' was absolutely cut off by an imperative grasp and hush from Miss Hacket the elder; Aunt Jane was suffocating with laughter, Lady Merrifield, between that and a certain shame for womanhood, which made her begin to talk at random about anything or everything else.

CHAPTER XXII. -- NAY.

'What a mull they have made of it!' were Mr. Maurice Mohun's first words when he found the compartment free for a tete-a-tete with his brother.

'All's well that ends well,' was the brief reply.

'Well, indeed! Mary would not have thought so.' To which the colonel had nothing to say.

'It serves me out,' his brother went on presently. 'I ought to have done something for that wretched fellow before I went, or, at any rate, have put Dolly on her guard; but I always shirked the very thought of him.'

'Nothing would have kept him out of harm's way.'

'It might have kept the child; but she must have been thicker with him than I ever knew. However I shall have her with me for the future, and in better hands.'

'You really mean to take her out?'

'That's what brought me home. She isn't happy; that is plain from her letters; and Jane does not know what to make of her, nor Lilias either.'

'When were your last letters dated?'

'The last week in September.'

'Early days,' muttered the colonel.

'I thought it an experiment, you know; but you said so much about Lily's girls being patterns, that I thought Jasper Merrifield might have made her more rational and less flighty, and all that sort of thing; but of course it was a very different tone from what the child was used to, and you couldn't tell what the young barbarians were out of sight.'

'So I began to think last winter; but I fancy you will find that she and Lily understand one another a good deal better than they did at first.'

'I thought she did not receive my intelligence as a deliverance. I am glad if she can carry away an affectionate remembrance, but I want to have her under my own eye.'

'I suppose that's all right,' was the half reluctant reply.

'There's Phyllis. She is full of good sense, with no nonsense about her or May, and her girls are downright charming.'

'Very likely; but I say, Maurice, you must not underrate Lilias. She has gone through a good deal with Dolores, and I believe she has been the making of her. You've had to leave the poor child a good deal to herself and Fraulein, and, as you see by this affair, she had some ways that made it hard for Lily to deal with her at first.'

Her father plainly did not like this. 'There was no harm in the poor child, but as I should have foreseen, there's always an atmosphere of sentiment and ritual and flummery about Lilias, totally different from what she was used to.'

Colonel Mohun had nearly said, 'So much the better,' but turned it into, 'I think you will change your opinion.'

Brothers and sisters, and cousins, whatever they may be to the external world, always remain relatively to each other pretty much as they knew one another when a single home held them all. The familiar Christian names seemed to revive the old ways, and it was amusing to see the somewhat grave and silent colonel treated by his elder brother as the dashing, heedless boy, needing to be looked after, while his sister Jane remained the ready helper and counsellor, and Lady Merrifield was still in his eyes the unpractical, fanciful Lily with an unfortunately suggestive rhyme to her name.

Perhaps it maintained him in this opinion, that when he had answered all questions about Captain and Mrs. Harry May, and had dilated on their pretty house in the suburbs of Auckland, his sisters expected him to tell of the work of the Church among the Maoris and Fijians. He laughed at them for thinking colonists troubled their heads about natives.

'I know Phyllis does. One of Harry May's brothers went out as a missionary.'

'Disenchanted and came home again when his wife came into a fortune.'

'Not a bit of it,' said Aunt Jane. 'I know him and all about him. He stayed till his health broke, and now he is one of the most useful men in the country. He is coming to speak for the S.P.G. at Rockquay, Lily; and you must come and meet him and his charming wife. They will tell you a very different story about Harry's doings.'

'Well,' allowed Mr. Mohun, 'there are apparitions of brown n.i.g.g.e.rs done up as smart as twopence prancing about the house. Perfectly uninteresting, you know, the savage sophisticated out of his picturesqueness. I made a point of asking no questions, not knowing what I might be let in for.'

'Then you heard nothing of Mr. Ward, the Melanesian missionary, whom Phyllis keeps a room for when he comes to New Zealand to recruit.'

'The man who was convicted of murder on circ.u.mstantial evidence! Oh yes.

I heard of him. I believe the labour-traffic agents heartily wish him at Portland still, he makes the natives so much too sharp.'

'Aye,' said the colonel, 'as long as Britons aren't slaves they have no objection to anything but the name for other people.'

'Wait till you get out there, Regie, and see what they all say about those lazy fellows--except, of course, ladies and parsons, and a few whom they've bitten, like May.'

'The few are on the Christian side, of course,' said Lady Merrifield, with irony in her tone.

Indeed, she was not at all sure that half this colonial prejudice was not a.s.sumed in order to tease her, just as in former times her brother would make game of her enthusiasms about school children; for he was altogether returned to his old self, his sister Jane, who had seen the most of him, testifying that the original Maurice had revived, as never in the course of his married life.

Dolores tried to forget or disbelieve the words she had heard about his having come to fetch her away, and said no word about them until they had been unmistakably repeated. Then she felt a sort of despair at the idea of being separated from her aunt and Mysie, for indeed they had penetrated to affections deeper than had ever been consciously stirred in her before. Yet she was old enough to shrink from allowing to her father that she preferred staying with them to going with him, and it was to her Aunt Jane that she had recourse. That lady, after returning from her expedition to bring her sister Adeline to Silverton, was surprised by a timid knock at the door, and Dolores's entrance.

'Oh, if you please, Aunt Jane, may I come in? I do so want to speak to you alone. Don't you think it is a sad pity that I should go away from the Cambridge examination? Could not you tell my father so?'

'You want to stay for the Cambridge examination,' said Aunt Jane, a little amused at the manner of touching on the subject, though sorry for the girl.

'I have been taking great pains under Miss Vincent, and it does seem a pity to miss it.'

'I don't think it will make much difference to you.'

'Oh, but I do want to be thoroughly well educated. I meant to go through them all, like Gillian and Mysie, and I am sure father must wish it too.

I know he meant it when he went out last year.'

'Yes, he did,' said Miss Mohun. 'It was very unlucky that he did not get any of our later letters.'

'I have tried to tell him that it is all different now, but he does not seem to care,' said Dolores.

'He has quite made up his mind,' said her aunt.

'Has he quite?' said Dolores. 'I thought perhaps if you talked to him about the examination and the confirmation too--'