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.
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