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"I'll send then my usual messenger," said Mitchy, "a person I keep for such jobs, thoroughly seasoned, as you may imagine, and of a discretion —what do you call it?—a toute epreuve. Only you must let me say that I like your terror about Harold! Do you think he spends his time over Dr. Watts's hymns?"

Mrs. Brookenham just hesitated, and nothing, in general, was so becoming to her as the act of hesitation. "Dear Mitchy, do you know I want awfully to talk to you about Harold?"

"About his French reading, Mrs. Brook?" Mitchy responded with interest. "The worse things are, let me just mention to you about that, the better they seem positively to be for one's feeling up in the language. They're more difficult, the bad ones—and there's a lot in that. All the young men know it—those who are going up for exams."

She had her eyes for a little on Lord Petherton and her husband; then as if she had not heard what her interlocutor had just said she overcame her last scruple. "Dear Mitchy, has he had money from you?"