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"I think the way will mend a little," Lawrence allowed.

"What place is next to Cassel?"

"As our resting place for the night? I am afraid it will take us two days to get to Weimar."

"And then Dresden?"

"No, then Leipzig."

"Oh, I should like to see Leipzig," cried Dolly.

"What for?" said her mother. "I am sure all these places are nothing to us, and I think the country is very stupid. And I like travelling where I know what the people say. I feel as if I had got five thousand miles from anywhere. What do you suppose keeps your father, Dolly?"

"I don't know, mother."

"You may write and tell him, if he don't come to us in Dresden I shall go back. This isn't _my_ notion of pleasure."

"But it is doing you good, mother."

"I hadn't anything I could eat this evening. If you don't mind, Dolly, I'll go to bed."

Dolly did mind, for she longed for a walk again among the strange scenes and people. As it was not to be had this time, she sat at her window and looked out. It was moonlight, soft weather; and her eye was at least filled with novelty enough, even so. But her thoughts went back to what was not novel. The day had been dull and fatiguing.

Dolly's spirits were quiet. She too was longing for her father, with a craving, anxious longing that was more full of fear than of hope. And as she thought it over again, she did not like her position. Her mother was little of a shield between her and what she wanted to escape, Lawrence St. Leger's attentions; and she could but imperfectly protect herself. True, she knew she gave him no direct encouragement. Yet he was constantly with her, he had the right of taking care of her, he let her see daily what a pleasure it was, and she was not able to turn it into the reverse of pleasure. She could not repulse him, unless he pushed his advances beyond a certain point; and Lawrence was clever enough to see that he had better not do that. He took things for granted a little, in a way that annoyed Dolly. She knew she gave him no proper encouragement; nevertheless, the things she could not forbid might seem to weave a tacit claim by and by. She wished for her father on her own account. But when she thought of what was keeping him, Dolly's head went down in agony. "O father, father!" she cried in the depths of her heart, "why don't you come? how can you let us ask in vain? and what dreadful, dreadful entanglement it must be that has such power over you to make you do things so unlike yourself! Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do? I cannot reach him now--only by letters."

Mrs. Copley got up next morning in renewed spirits. "Dolly," she inquired while she was dressing, in which business Dolly always helped her,--"is anything settled between St. Leger and you?"

"Settled, mother? He is father's secretary,--at least so he calls himself,--taking care of us in father's absence. There is nothing else settled, nor to be settled."

"You know why he is here, child."

"Because father isn't, mother; and I should like to make the exchange as quickly as possible."

"What's the matter with him, Dolly?"

"The principal thing is, he won't take a hint."

"No, no; I mean, what fault do you find in him?"

"That, mother. Nothing else."

"He worships the ground you tread on."

"Mother, I think that is a pity. Don't you?"

"I think you ought to be very glad of it. I am. Dolly, the St. Legers are _very_ well off; he is rich, and his father is rich; and there is that beautiful place, and position, and everything you could desire."

"Position!" Dolly repeated. "Mother, I think I make my own position. At any rate, I like it better than his."

"O Dolly! the St. Legers"----

"They are not anything particular, mother. Rich bankers; that is all."

"And isn't that enough?"

"Well, no," said Dolly, laughing. "It would take a good deal more to tempt me away from you and father."

"But, child, you've got to go. And Mr. St. Leger is as fond of you as ever he can be."

"He will not break his heart, mother. He is not that sort. Don't think it."

"I don't care if he did!" said Mrs. Copley, half crying. "It is not _him_ I am thinking of; it is you."

"Thank you, mother," said Dolly, putting her arms round her mother's neck and kissing her repeatedly. "But I am not going to leave you for any such person. And I don't think so much of money as you do."

"Dolly, Dolly, money is a good thing."

"There is not enough of it in the world to buy me, mother. Don't try to fix my price."

The rest of that day Dolly was gay. Whether from the reaction of spirits natural to seventeen, or whether she were lightened in heart by the explicitness of her talk with her mother in the morning, she was the life of the day's journey. The road itself mended; the landscape was often noble, with fine oak and beech woods, and lovely in its rich cultivation; meadows and ploughed fields and tracts of young grain and smiling villages alternating with one another. There was no tedium in the carriage from morning to night. St. Leger and Rupert laughed at Dolly, and with her; and Mrs. Copley, in spite of chewing the cud of mortification at Dolly's impracticableness, was beguiled into forgetting herself. Sometimes this happy effect could be managed; at other times it was impossible. But more days followed, not so gay.

"I'm as tired as I can be!" was Mrs. Copley's declaration, as they were approaching Leipzig.

"We'll soon get to our hotel now," said Lawrence soothingly.

"'Tain't that," said Mrs. Copley; "I am tired of hotels too. I am tired of going from one place to another. I should like to stay still somewhere."

"But it is doing you good, mother."

"I don't see it," said Mrs. Copley. "And what do you mean by its doing me good, Dolly? What is good that you don't feel? It's like something handsome that you can't see; and if you call that good, I don't. I wonder if life's to everybody what it is to me!"

"Not exactly," said Lawrence. "Not everybody can go where he likes and do what he will, and have such an attendant handmaiden everywhere."

"Do what I will!" cried Mrs. Copley, who like other dissatisfied people did not like to have her case proved against her,--"much you know about it, Mr. St. Leger! If I had my will, I would go back to America."

"Then you would have to do without your handmaiden," said Lawrence.

"You do not think that we on this side are so careless of our own advantage as to let such a valuable article go out of the country?"

It was said with just such a mixture of jest and earnest that Dolly could hardly take it up. The words soothed Mrs. Copley, though her answer hardly sounded so.

"I suppose that is what mothers have to make up their minds to," she said. "Just when their children are ready to be some comfort to them, off they go, to begin the same game on their own account. I sometimes wonder whether it is worth while to live at all!"

"But one can't help that," said Rupert.

"I don't see what it amounts to."

"Mother, think of the Dresden Green vaults," said Dolly.

"Well, I do," said Mrs. Copley. "That keeps me up. But when I have seen them, Dolly, what will keep me up then?"

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