With this ominous prophecy, the Captain then took himself off, leaving his parent unperturbed, and his sister seething. Hardly had the door closed behind him, than she exclaimed: “I think John is the most vexatious creature alive! How could you let him go, Mama? You know what he is! I daresay you won’t set eyes on him again for a month! And now he won’t even meet Elizabeth!”

“It is unfortunate, but I don’t despair,” replied Mrs. Staple, smiling faintly. “As for letting him go, a man of nine-and-twenty, my love, is not to be held in leading-strings. Moreover, had I obliged him to come home to meet Elizabeth I am persuaded he would have taken her in aversion from the outset.”

“Well,” said Fanny crossly, “I think he is odiously provoking, ma’am!”

“Very true, my dear: all men are odiously provoking,” agreed Mrs. Staple. “Now I am going to bed, and you had best do the same.”

“Yes, or Lichfield will wonder what has become of me,” Fanny said, getting up from her chair.

“Not at all,” responded her mother coolly. “Lichfield, dear child, is no less provoking than any other man, and is at this moment—I have no doubt—playing faro downstairs.”

Fanny acknowledged the probable truth of this pronouncement by bidding her parent a dignified goodnight.

Chapter 2

CAPTAIN STAPLE was not destined to leave Easterby at an early hour on the following morning. Thanks to the nocturnal habits of Lord Melksham, it was daylight before he went to bed. That amiable but erratic peer, dissuaded from opening a faro bank, had challenged the company to a quiet game of loo; and since the elders of the party, who included besides the Archdeacon, his brother-in-law, Mr.