'No; but I fancy he is rather reserved.'

'What's this about giving up what he has undertaken? What is it?'

'When Mr. Dutton went to London, he asked Mark to take his Sunday afternoons with the big lads. He thought they wanted some one with more resources and variety than there is in poor Gerard, who didn't at all like being passed over.'

'I never should have thought it of Mark. He never dreamt of teaching anybody at home.'

'Very likely not, but there is an atmosphere at St. Ambrose's.'

'And oh, how glad I am to be in it! I wonder how long they will let me stay! The dear little mother will try to get me a Sunday here, if she dares. Indeed, I can't hear before Saturday, and then there would hardly be time to get home! Oh, that's jolly! I'll go to the nursery gardens, and get such flowers for the vases!'

Saturday brought Nuttie a letter, but not from her mother—

'My Dear Ursula—I write because we are anxious to keep your mother as quiet as possible. It was a serious shock to her to find that you had left home, and she naturally supposed that Miss Headworth was in great danger. Your father was greatly displeased, and she has been much overcome, and very unwell, but we hope by keeping her perfectly quiet that worse consequences may be prevented. Your father desires you to remain where you are for the present, as he will not have her disturbed again. Your mother sends her love both to you and to your aunt, and desires me to say that she will write in a day or two, and that she thinks you had better not come back till she is better and your father's vexation has diminished.

'I wish you had informed us of your intentions, as then we could have ascertained the grounds of the report that terrified you so strangely.—I remain your affectionate aunt,
JANE M. EGREMONT.'

'Poor mother! he has been sneering at us all in his dreadful cynical way, and knocked her up into one of her awful headaches,' said Nuttie, who felt extremely angered by the grave tone of rebuke in the letter, and tossed it over to her aunt without absolutely reading it all. Miss Headworth was a good deal distressed, and anxious to know what Mrs. William Egremont meant; but Nuttie positively declared, 'Oh, it is her headaches! You know she always had them more or less, and they have grown a great deal worse since she has taken to sitting in that horrid, stuffy, perfumy, cigar-ry room, and doesn't take half exercise enough.'