“Well, you needn’t fly out at me.  I am your friend, as you will see.  Make me your confidante.  Explain, please.  How can you be crossed in love if there’s no other man?”

“It’s her father.  He has discovered our love, and forbids her to speak to me.”

“Her father!” said Julia, contemptuously.  “Is that all? That for her father!  You shall have her in spite of fifty fathers.  If it had been a lover, now.”

“I should have talked to him, not to you,” said Walter, with his eyes flashing.

“Be quiet, Walter; as it is not a lover, nor even a mother, you shall have the girl; and a very sweet girl she is.  Will you accept me for your ally?  Women are wiser than men in these things, and understand one another.”

“Oh, Miss Clifford,” said Walter, “this is good of you!  Of course it will be a great blessing to us both to have your sympathy and assistance.”

“Well, then,” said Julia, “begin by telling me—­have you spoken to her father?”

“No.”

“Then that is the very first thing to be done.  Come, order our horses.  We will ride over directly.  I will call on Miss Bartley, and you on Mister.  Now mind, you must ignore all that has passed, and just ask his permission to court his daughter.  Whilst you are closeted with him, the young lady and I will learn each other’s minds with a celerity you poor slow things have no idea of.”

“I see one thing,” said Walter, “that I am a child in such matters compared with you.  What decision! what promptitude!”

“Then imitate it, young man.  Order the horses directly;” and she stamped her foot impatiently.

Walter turned to the stables without another word, and Julia flew upstairs to put on her riding-habit.

* * * * *

Bartley was in his study with a map of the farm before him, and two respectable but rather rough men in close conference over it.  These were practical men from the county of Durham, whom he had ferreted out by means of an agent, men who knew a great deal about coal.  They had already surveyed the farm, and confirmed Hope’s opinion that coal lay below the surface of certain barren fields, and the question now was as to the exact spot where it would be advisable to sink the first shaft.

Bartley was heart and soul in this, and elevated by love of gain far above such puny considerations as the happiness of Mary Bartley and her lover.  She, poor girl, sat forlorn in her little drawing-room, and tried to draw a bit, and tried to read a bit, and tried to reconcile a new German symphony to her ear as well as to her judgment, which told her it was too learned not to be harmonious, though it sounded very discordant.  But all these efforts ended in a sigh of despondency, and in brooding on innocent delights forbidden, and a prospect which, to her youth and inexperience, seemed a wilderness robbed of the sun.