“I am sorry you are going; but as to our play, that is all over — entirely at an end” (looking significantly at his father). “The painter was sent off yesterday, and very little will remain of the theatre to-morrow. I knew how that would be from the first. It is early for Bath. You will find nobody there.”

“It is about my uncle's usual time.”

“When do you think of going?”

“I may, perhaps, get as far as Banbury to-day.”

“Whose stables do you use at Bath?” was the next question; and while this branch of the subject was under discussion, Maria, who wanted neither pride nor resolution, was preparing to encounter her share of it with tolerable calmness.