'
'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.
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