clared Hester, "I must speak of her as I think, to you. Oh,
she has been so insolent!"

"Insolent to you! How? Why?"

"Nay: you had better ask her why. Her confidence was all about her
brother. She seems to think,--she did not say so, or I should have
known better how to answer her, but she seems to think that her brother
is--(I can hardly speak it even to you, Margaret!)--is in some way in
danger from me. Now, you and I know that he cares no more for me than
for any one of the people who were there to-day; and yet she went on
telling me, and I could not stop her, about the views of his family for
him!"

"What views?"

"Views which, I imagine, it by no means follows that he has for himself.
If she has been impertinent to me, she has been even more so to him. I
wonder how she dares meddle in his concerns as she does."

"Well, but what views?" persisted Margaret.

"Oh, about his marrying:--that he is the darling of his family,--that
large family interests hang upon his marrying,--that all his relations
think it is time he was settling, and that he told her last week that he
was of that opinion himself:--and then she went on to say that there was
the most delightful accordance in their views for him;--that they did
not much value beauty,--that they should require for him something of a
far higher order than beauty, and which indeed was seldom found with
it--"

"Insolent creature! Did she say that to you?"

"Indeed she did: and that her brother's wife must be of a good family,
with a fortune worthy of his own; and, naturally, of a county family."

"A county family!" said Margaret, half laughing. "What matters county
or city, when two people are watching over one another for life and
death, and for hereafter?"

"With such people as Mrs Rowland," said Hester, "marriage is a very
superficial affair. If family, fortune, and equipage are but right, the
rest may be left to Providence. Temper, mind, heart--. The worst of
all, however, was her ending--or what was made her ending by our being
interrupted."

"Well! what was her finish?"

"She put her face almost under my bonnet, as she looked smiling at me,
and said there was a young lady--she wished she could tell me all about
it--the time would come when she might--there was a sweet girl, beloved
by them all for many years, from her very childhood, whom they had hopes
of receiving, at no very distant time, as Philip's wife."

"I do not believe it," crie