ter.

Many simple-minded men of disengaged affections, cheerfully pursuing
their virtuous avocations, would be thunderstruck if they knew the dark
suspicions harboured against them in spinster bosoms, that they are
concealing some discreditable matrimonial secret, which alone can
account for their--well--their _extraordinary_ behaviour in not coming
forward!

It has actually been said that real life is not always like a novel.
This feebly false assertion was disproved forever in Aunt Aggie's mind
by the sight of a dog-cart coming rapidly toward her from the direction
of Lostford. She glanced indifferently at it as it approached, and then
her pale eyes became glued to it. In the dog-cart sat Everard Constable,
now Lord Lossiemouth. She had not seen him for fifteen years, but
nevertheless she recognised him instantly. There was no doubt it was he:
thickened and coarsened, but still he. He whirled past leaning back in
his seat, looking neither to right nor left.

Aunt Aggie's heart gave a thump that nearly upset her equilibrium. The
biscuit dropped onto the road, with a general upheaval of crumbs from
all parts of her agitated person.

Lord Lossiemouth!

Going in the direction of Priesthope!

Her letter!

She nearly swooned with joy and pride.

Now Mary and Algernon, now everyone would believe in her.

She raised herself from the heap of stones and with trembling legs
hurried towards "The Towers." She must tell Mary at once.

She found Lady Blore seated at her writing-table in the drawing-room,
which was choked by the eastern and Japanese impedimenta, the draperies,
the krises, the metal bowls, the ivory boxes, which an Indian career
seems so inevitably to entail. Sir John had brought back crates of the
kind of foreign _bric-a-brac_ cheap imitations of which throng London
shop windows. The little entrance hall was stuffy with skins. Horned
skulls garnished the walls, pleading silently for decent burial. Even
the rugs had once been bears.

Aunt Mary was bored with her drawing-room, which looked like a stall at
a bazaar, but, to her credit be it said, that she had never made any
change in it, except to remove a brass idol from the writing-table, at
which she was at this moment sitting.

By one of those sudden instincts which make people like Aunt Aggie the
despair of those with whom they live, she instantaneously conceived the
idea (for no reason except that she was thinking of her own letter) that
her sister