child!" he said, with a sigh, "if I can but keep a cool head and a broad heart through the years of trouble before us!"
"Years!" exclaimed Erica, dismayed.
"This affair may drag on almost indefinitely, and a personal strife is apt to be lowering."
"Yes," said Erica, musingly, "to be libeled does set one's back up dreadfully, and to be much praised humbles one to the very dust."
"What will the Fane-Smiths say to this? Will they believe it of me?"
"I can't tell," said Erica, hesitatingly.
"'He that's evil deemed is half hanged,'" said Raeburn bitterly. "Never was there a truer saying than that."
"'Blaw the wind ne'er so fast, it will lown at the last'" quoted Erica, smiling. "Equally true, PADRE MIO."
"Yes, dear," he said quietly, "but not in my life time. You see if I let this pass, the lies will be circulated, and they'll say I can't contradict them. If I bring an action against the fellow, people will say I do it to flaunt my opinions in the face of the public. As your hero Livingstone once remarked, 'Isn't it interesting to get blamed for everything?' However, we must make the best of it. How about the new house? When can we settle in? I feel a longing for that study with its twenty-two feet o' length for pacing!"
"What are your engagements?" she asked, taking up a book from the table. "Eleventh, Newcastle; 12th, Nottingham; 13th and 14th, Plymouth. Let me see, that will bring you home on Monday, the 15th, and will leave us three clear days to get things straight; that will do capitally."
"And you'll be sure to see that the books are carefully moved," said Raeburn. "I can't have the markers displaced."
Erica laughed. Her father had a habit of putting candle lighters in his books to mark places for references, and the appearance of the book shelves all bristling with them had long been a family joke, more especially as, if a candle lighter happened to be wanted for its proper purpose, there was never one to be found.
"I will pack them myself," she said.




CHAPTER XXXI. Brian as Avenger

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