“To do as you ask me would be to endorse your charge against my father, that he lied in acknowledging me simply to give you annoyance! And I have the same objection with regard to my uncle and aunt, of whom you would make liars and conspirators!”

He turned to the door.

“You will consider it?” said her ladyship in her stateliest yet softest tone.

“I will. I will continue to consider it the worst insult you could have offered my father, your late husband!”

“What am I to understand by that?”

“Whatever your ladyship chooses.”

“Then you mean to dispute the title?”

“I decline to say what I mean or do not mean to do.”

Lady Ann rose to ring the bell.

Miss Malliver met Richard in the doorway.

“I am going to bid Theodora good-bye,” he said.

“You shall do no such thing!” cried her ladyship.

Richard flew up the stairs and went straight to his sister’s room.

The moment Theodora saw him, she sprang from the bed where she had been crying, and threw her arms around him. He told her he had come to say good-bye.

“But you’re not going really—forever?” she said.

“My dear sister, what else can I do? Nobody here wants me!”

“Indeed, Richard, I do!”

“I know you do, and the time will come when you shall have me, but you would not have me live where I am not loved.”

“Richard!” she cried, with a burst of indignation, “you are the only gentleman in the family!”

Richard laughed, and Theodora dried her eyes. Miss Malliver was near enough to be able to report all she had heard, and the poor girl had a bad time of it in consequence.

“I will not trouble Arthur,” said Richard. “Say good-bye to him for me, and give him my love. Please tell him that, although all I had was my father’s yet, as between him and me, Miss Brown is mine, and I expect him to send her to Wylder Hall. Good-bye again to my dear sister! I leave a bit of my heart in the house, where I know it will not be trampled on!”

Theodora could not speak. Her only answer was another embrace, and they parted.

Richard went to see Barbara, and found her at the parsonage.

“What an opportunity you have,” said Wingfold, “of maintaining before the world the honour of work! The man who makes a thing exist that did not exist, or who sets anything right that had gone wrong, must be more worthy than he who only consumes what exists, or helps things to remain wrong!”

“But,” suggested Barbara, with her usual keenness, “are you not now encouraging him to seek the praise of men? To seek it for a good thing, is the more contemptible.”