wful rebuke, "I am afraid
you are not listening to me."

"Indeed I am," said Mrs. Carvel, patiently.

"Well, then, Mary, I say it is a hollow sham, and that it cannot go on
any longer."

"Yes, my dear," assented her sister. "I have no doubt you are right; but
what were you referring to as a hollow sham?"

"You are hopeless, Mary,--you have no intuitions. Of course I mean
Paul."

Even this was not perfectly clear, and Mrs. Carvel looked inquiringly at
her sister.

"Is it possible you do not understand?" asked Chrysophrasia. "Do you
propose to allow my niece--my niece, Mary, and your daughter," she
repeated with awful emphasis--"to fall in love with her own cousin?"

"I am sure the dear child would never think of such a thing," answered
Mary Carvel, very gently, and as though not wishing to contradict her
sister. "He has not been here twenty-four hours."

"The dear child is thinking of it at this very moment," said
Chrysophrasia. "And what is more, Paul has come here with the deliberate
intention of marrying her. I have seen it from the first moment he
entered the house. I can see it in his eyes."

"Well, my dear, you may be right. But I have not noticed anything of the
sort, and I think you go too far. You will jump at conclusions,
Chrysophrasia."

"If I went at them at all, Mary, I would glide,--I certainly would not
jump," replied the aesthetic lady, with a languid smile. Mrs. Carvel
looked wearily out of the window. "Besides," continued Chrysophrasia,
"the thing is quite impossible. Paul is not at all a match. Hermy will
be very rich, some day. John will not leave everything to Macaulay: I
have heard him say so."

"Why do you discuss the matter, Chrysophrasia?" objected Mrs. Carvel,
with a little shade of very mild impatience. "There is no question of
Hermy marrying Paul."

"Then Paul ought to go away at once."

"We cannot send him away. Besides, I think he is a very good fellow. You
forget that poor Annie is in the house, and he has a right to see her,
at least for a week."

"It seems to me that Annie might go and live with him."

"He has no home, poor fellow,--he is in the diplomatic service. He is
made to fly from Constantinople to Persia, and from Persia to St.
Petersburg; how could he take poor Annie with him?"

"If poor Annie chose," said Chrysophrasia, sniffing the air with a
disagreeable expression, "poor Annie could go. If she has sense enough
to dress herself gorgeously and to read dry