ity, let us consider the question of informing your aunt
of our engagement."

"Oh dear, dear, dear!" said Annie, "that is a great deal worse than
informing Miss March that you don't want to be engaged to her."

"That is true," said Lawrence. "It is not by any means an easy piece
of business. But we might as well look it square in the face, and
determine what is to be done about it."

"It is simple enough, just as we look at it," said Annie. "All we have
to do, is to say that, knowing that Aunt Keswick had written to my
father that she was determined to make a match between cousin Junius
and me, I was afraid to come down here without putting up some
insurmountable obstacle between me and a man that I had not seen since
I was a little girl. Of course I would say, very decidedly, that I
wouldn't have married him if I hadn't wanted to; but then, considering
Aunt Keswick's very open way of carrying out her plans, it would have
been very unpleasant, and indeed impossible for me to be in the house
with him unless she saw that there was no hope of a marriage between
us; and for this reason I took the name of Mrs Null, or Mrs Nothing;
and came down here, secure under the protection of a husband who
never existed. And then, we could say that you and I were a good deal
together, and that, although you had supposed, when you came here,
that you were in love with Miss March, you had discovered that this
was a mistake, and that afterwards we fell in love with each other,
and are now engaged. That would be a straightforward statement of
everything, just as it happened; but the great trouble is: How are we
going to tell it to Aunt Keswick?"

"You are right," said Lawrence. "How are we going to tell it?"

"It need not be told!" thundered a strong voice close to their ears.
And then there was a noise of breaking lattice-work and cracking
vines, and through the back part of the arbor came an old woman
wearing a purple sun-bonnet, and beating down all obstacles before
her with a great purple umbrella. "You needn't tell it!" cried Mrs
Keswick, standing in the middle of the arbor, her eyes glistening, her
form trembling, and her umbrella quivering in the air. "You needn't
tell it! It's told!"

Graphic and vivid descriptions have been written of those furious
storms of devastating wind and deluging rain, which suddenly sweep
away the beauty of some fair tropical scene; and we have read, too, of
dreadful cyclones and tornadoes, which ru