CHAPTER XXIX.
The card of Mr.Powys found Arabella alone in the house.

Mrs.Lupin was among village school-children; Mrs.Chump had gone to London to see whether anything was known of Mr.Pole at his office, where she fell upon the youth Braintop, and made him her own for the day.

Adela was out in the woods, contemplating nature; and Cornelia was supposed to be walking whither her stately fancy drew her.
"Will you take long solitary walks unprotected ?" she was asked.
"I have a parasol," she replied; and could hear, miles distant, the domestic comments being made on her innocence; and the story it would be--"She thinks of no possible danger but from the sun." A little forcing of her innocence now was necessary as an opiate for her conscience.

She was doing what her conscience could only pardon on the plea of her extreme innocence.

The sisters, and the fashion at Brookfield, permitted the assumption, and exaggerated it willingly.