Chapter 19 - Page 2

already."

"Your ambition is always to turn back. You may turn back now if you like. I shall go on." Miss Yordas knew that her sister would fail of the courage to ride home all alone.

Mrs. Carnaby never would ride without Jordas or some other serving-man behind her, as was right and usual for a lady of her position; but "Lady Philippa" was of bolder strain, and cared for nobody's thoughts, words, or deeds. And she had ordered her sister's servant back for certain reasons of her own.

"Very well, very well. You always will go on, and always on the road you choose yourself. Although it requires a vast deal of knowledge to know that there is any road here at all."

The widow, who looked very comely for her age, and sat her pony prettily, gave way (as usual) to the stronger will; though she always liked to enter protest, which the elder scarcely ever deigned to notice. But hearing that Eliza had a little cough at night, and knowing that her appetite had not been as it ought to be, Philippa (who really was wrapped up in her sister, but never or seldom let her dream of such a fact) turned round graciously and said:

"I have ordered the carriage here for half past three o'clock. We will go back by the Scarbend road, and Heartsease can trot behind us."

"Heartsease, uneasy you have kept my heart by your shufflings and trippings perpetual. Philippa, I want a better-stepping pony. Pet has ruined Heartsease."

"Pet ruins everything and everybody; and you are ruining him, Eliza. I am the only one who has the smallest power over him. And he is beginning to cast off that. If it comes to open war between us, I shall be sorry for Lancelot."

"And I shall be sorry for you, Philippa. In a few years Pet will be a man. And a man is always stronger than a woman; at any rate in our family."

"Stronger than such as you, Eliza. But let him only rebel against me, and he will find himself an outcast. And to prove that, I have brought you here."

Mistress Yordas turned round, and looked in a well-known manner at her sister, whose beautiful eyes filled with tears, and fell.

"Philippa," she said, with a breath like a sob, "sometimes you look harder than poor dear papa, in his very worst moments, used to look. I am sure that I do not at all deserve it. All that I pray for is peace and comfort; and little do I get of either."

"And you will get less, as long as you pray for them, instead of doing something better. The only way to get such things is to make them."

"Then I think that you might make enough for us both, if you had any regard for them, or for me, Philippa."

Mistress Yordas smiled, as she often did, at her sister's style of reasoning. And she cared not a jot for the last word, so long as the will and the