bout half an hour, there came down the stairs, at one end of
the hall, an elderly person who somewhat resembled Mr Brandon of
Midbranch. The clothes and the hat were the same that that gentleman
wore, and the same heavy gold chain with dangling seal-rings hung
across his ample waistcoat; but there was a general air of haggardness
and stoop about him which did not in the least suggest the upright and
portly gentleman who had written his name in the hotel register the
day before yesterday.

Colonel Macon made five strides towards him, and seized his hand.
"What," said he, "how----?"

Mr Brandon did not look at him; he let his eyes fall where they chose;
it mattered not to him what they gazed upon; and, in a low voice, he
said: "It is all over."

"Over!" repeated the colonel.

Mr Brandon put a feeble hand on his friend's arm, and together they
walked into the reading room, where they sat down in a corner.

"Have you settled it then?" asked Colonel Macon with great anxiety.
"Is she gone?"

"It is settled," said Mr Brandon. "We are to be married."

"Married!" cried Colonel Macon, springing to his feet. "Great Heavens,
man! What do you mean?"

Not very fluently, and in sentences with a very few words in each of
them, but words that sank like hot coals into the soul of his hearer,
Mr Brandon explained what he meant. It had been of no use, he said, to
try to get out of it; the old woman had him with the grip of a vise.
That letter had done it all. He ought to have known that she was not
to be frightened, but it was needless to talk about that. It was all
over now, and he was as much bound to her as if he had promised before
a magistrate.

"But you don't mean to say," exclaimed the colonel in a voice of
anguish, "that you are really going to marry her?"

"Sir," said Mr Brandon, solemnly, "there is no way to get out of it.
If you think there is, you don't know the woman."

"I would have died first!" said the colonel. "I never would have
submitted to her!"

"I did not submit," replied Mr Brandon. "That was done when the
letter was written. I roused myself, and I said everything I could
say, but it was all useless, she held me to my promise. I told her I
would fly to the ends of the earth rather than marry her, and then,
sir, she threatened me with a prosecution for breach of promise; and
think of the disgrace that that would bring upon me; upon my family
name; and on my niece and her young husband. It was a mistake