“I—­” began the Rector and stopped.  He perceived that the situation could easily be complicated.

“I must just think about it quietly,” went on the girl.  “And I must write a note to say so....  Father ...”

He glanced in her direction.

“Father, about being fond of a man....  Need it be—­well, as I was fond of Frank?  I don’t think Lord Talgarth could have expected that, could he?  But if you—­well—­get on with a man very well, understand him—­can stand up to him without annoying him ... and ... and care for him, really, I mean, in such a way that you like being with him very much, and look up to him very much in all kinds of ways—­(I’m very sorry to have to talk like this, but whom am I to talk to, father dear?) Well, if I found I did care for Lord Talgarth like that—­like a sort of daughter, or niece, and more than that too, would that—­”

“I don’t know,” said the Rector, abruptly standing up.  “I don’t know; you mustn’t ask me.  You must settle all that yourself.”

She looked up at him, startled, it seemed, by the change in his manner.

“Father, dear—­” she began, with just the faintest touch of pathetic reproach in her voice.  But he did not appear moved by it.

“You must settle,” he said.  “You have all the data.  I haven’t.  I—­”

He stepped towards the door.

“Tell me as soon as you have decided,” he said, and went out.

(III)

The little brown dog called Lama, who in an earlier chapter once trotted across a lawn, and who had lately been promoted to sleeping upon Jenny’s bed, awoke suddenly that night and growled a low breathy remonstrance.  He had been abruptly kicked from beneath the bedclothes.

“Get off, you heavy little beast,” said a voice in the darkness.

Lama settled himself again with a grunt, half of comfort, half of complaint.

“Get off!” came the voice again, and again his ribs were heaved at by a foot.

He considered it a moment or two, and even shifted nearer the wall, still blind with sleep; but the foot pursued him, and he awoke finally to the conviction that it would be more comfortable by the fire; there was a white sheepskin there, he reflected.  As he finally reached the ground, a scratching was heard in the corner, and he was instantly alert, and the next moment had fitted his nose, like a kind of india-rubber pad, deep into a small mouse-hole in the wainscoting, and was breathing long noisy sighs down into the delicious and gamey-smelling darkness.

“Oh! be quiet!” came a voice from the bed.

Lama continued his investigations unmoved, and having decided, after one long final blow, that there was to be no sport, returned to the sheepskin with that brisk independent air that was so characteristic of him.  He was completely awake now, and stood eyeing the bed a moment, with the possibility in his mind that his mistress was asleep again, and that by a very gentle leap—­But a match was struck abruptly, and he lay down, looking, with that appearance of extreme wide-awakedness in his black eyes that animals always wear at night, at his restless mistress.