Miss Marjoribanks. Oliphant Margaret

to slip the reins out of his hands, and get the control of affairs with a skill which amused the Doctor, and made him a little proud of her abilities, even though he was himself the victim – she could not go on always unchecked in her triumphant career, but must endure like other people an occasional defeat. No doubt, had Lucilla been really worsted, paternal feeling would have interposed, and Dr Marjoribanks would to some extent have suffered in her suffering; but then the case was different, and nobody required, as it turned out, to suffer for Lucilla. The Doctor was pleased she had shown so much spirit, and pleased to see how entirely she had discomfited her antagonists, and turned the tables upon the "young puppy," in whom he had no confidence; and withal Dr Marjoribanks chuckled a little in his secret heart over the event itself, and concluded that it would do Lucilla good. She had vanquished Nancy, and by a skilful jerk taken the reins out of his own experienced hands. He was aware that he had been on the whole very wisely governed since his abdication, but yet he was not sorry that the young conqueror should feel herself human; so that nobody except Mrs Chiley felt that mingled rage and disappointment with which Barbara Lake had hoped to inspire Lucilla's bosom; and Mrs Chiley, so to speak, had nothing to do with it. As for Barbara herself, she returned home in a state of mingled spite and exultation and disgust, which filled her sister with amazement.

      "She is such an actor, you know," Barbara said; "she never will give in to let you know how she is feeling – not if she can help it; but for all that she must have felt it. Nobody could help feeling it, though she carried it off so well. I knew how it would be, as soon as I had on a dress that was fit to be seen."

      "What is it that she could not help feeling?" said Rose. "I suppose it is Lucilla you mean?"

      "I should like to know what right she had to be kind to me," cried Barbara, all glowing in her sullen but excited beauty; "and invite me there, and introduce me in her grand way, as if she was any better than I am! And then to look at all her India muslins; but I knew it would be different as soon as I had a decent dress," said the contralto, rising up to contemplate herself in the little mirror over the mantelpiece.

      This conversation took place in Mr Lake's little parlour, where Rose had been waiting for her sister, and where Barbara's white dress made an unusual radiance in the dim and partially-lighted room. Rose herself was all shrouded up in her morning dress, with her pretty round arms and shoulders lost to the common view. She had been amusing herself as she waited by working at a corner of that great design which was to win the prize on a later occasion. Readers of this history who have studied the earlier chapters will remember that Rose's tastes in ornamentation were very clearly defined for so young a person. Instead of losing herself in vague garlands of impossible flowers, the young artist clung with the tenacity of first love to the thistle leaf, which had been the foundation of her early triumphs. Her mind was full of it even while she received and listened to Barbara; whether to treat it in a national point of view, bringing in the rose and shamrock, which was a perfectly allowable proceeding, though perhaps not original – or whether she should yield to the "sweet feeling" which had been so conspicuous in her flounce, in the opinion of the Marlborough House gentlemen – or whether, on the contrary, she should handle the subject in a boldly naturalistic way, and use her spikes with freedom, – was a question which occupied at that moment all Rose's faculties. Even while she asked Barbara what the subject was on which Lucilla might be supposed to be excited, she was within herself thinking out this difficult idea – all the more difficult, perhaps, considering the nature of the subject, since the design in this case was not for a flounce, in which broad handling is practicable, but for a veil.