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30 immediately after breakfast. 'What has made you so slack about your hunting during the last two or three days?' he asked.

'I shall hunt to-morrow,' said Peregrine.

'Then you can afford time to ride with me through the woods after breakfast.' And so it would have been arranged had not Lady Mason immediately said that she hoped to be able to say a few words to Sir Peregrine in the library after breakfast. 'Place aux dames,' said he. 'Peregrine, the horses can wait.' And so the matter was arranged while they were still sitting over their toast.

Peregrine, as this was said, had looked at his mother, but she had not ventured to take her eyes for a moment from the teapot. Then he had looked at Lady Mason, and saw that she was, as it were, going through a fashion of eating her breakfast. In order to break the absolute silence of the room he muttered something about the weather, and then his grandfather, with the same object, answered him. After that no words were spoken till Sir Peregrine, rising from his chair, declared that he was ready.

He got up and opened the door for his guest, and then hurrying across the hall, opened the library door for her also, holding it till she had passed in. Then he took her left hand in his, and passing his right arm round her waist, asked her if anything disturbed her.

'Oh yes,' she said, 'yes; there is much that disturbs me. I have done very wrong.'

'How done wrong, Mary?' She could not recollect that he had called her Mary before, and the sound she thought was very sweet;—was very sweet, although she was over forty, and he over seventy years of age.

'I have done very wrong, and I have now come here that I may undo it. Dear Sir Peregrine, you must not be angry with me.'

'I do not think that I shall be angry with you; but what is it, dearest?'

But she did not know how to find words to declare her purpose. It was comparatively an easy task to tell Mrs. Orme that she had made up her mind not to marry Sir Peregrine, but it was by no means easy to tell the baronet himself. And now she stood there leaning over the fireplace, with his arm round her waist,—as it behoved her to stand no longer, seeing the resolution to which she had come. But still she did not speak.

'Well, Mary, what is it? I know there is something on your mind or you would not have summoned me in here. Is it about the trial? Have you seen Mr. Furnival again?'

'No; it is not about the trial,' she said, avoiding the other question.

'What is it then?'

'Sir Peregrine, it is impossible that we should be married.' And