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346 as I do. She would give her head off her shoulders to do me a pleasure."

"And for that reason," said Mark Robarts, "you ought, if possible, to do her pleasure."

"I can not absolutely marry a wife of her choosing, if you mean that," said Lord Lufton.

They went on walking about the garden for an hour, but they hardly got any farther than the point to which we have now brought them. Mark Robarts could not make up his mind on the spur of the moment; nor, as he said more than once to Lord Lufton, could he be at all sure that Lucy would in any way be guided by him. It was, therefore, at last settled between them that Lord Lufton should come to the Parsonage immediately after breakfast on the following morning. It was agreed also that the dinner had better not come off, and Robarts promised that he would, if possible, have determined by the morning as to what advice he would give his sister.

He went direct home to the Parsonage from Framley Court, feeling that he was altogether in the dark till he should have consulted his wife. How would he feel if Lucy were to become Lady Lufton? and how would he look Lady Lufton in the face in telling her that such was to be his sister's destiny? On returning home he immediately found his wife, and had not been closeted with her five minutes before he knew, at any rate, all that she knew.

"And you mean to say that she does love him?" said Mark.

"Indeed she does; and is it not natural that she should? When I saw them so much together I feared that she would, but I never thought that he would care for her."

Even Fanny did not as yet give Lucy credit for half her attractiveness. After an hour's talking the interview between the husband and wife ended in a message to Lucy, begging her to join them both in the book-room.

"Aunt Lucy," said a chubby little darling, who was taken up into his aunt's arms as he spoke, "papa and mamma 'ant 'oo in te tuddy, and I mus'n't go wis 'oo."

Lucy, as she kissed the boy and pressed his face against her own, felt that her blood was running quick to her heart.

"Mus'n't 'oo go wis me, my own one?" she said, as she put her playfellow down; but she played with the child only because she did not wish to betray even to him that