single brother, whether by nature or adoption, how to unwind his
sister's tangled affairs and bring them to a prosperous conclusion, I
shall not have penned them in vain.

XXXIII.

A FAMILY CONCLAVE.

I had written to Hartman more than once since my return, telling him to
keep up his spirits and bide his time. Before long came the permission
to open a correspondence with a more important person than I. What he
wrote I know not; he is probably able to do that well enough, whatever
blunders he may commit when face to face. I have reason to believe his
outpouring was answered, with excessive brevity but to the purpose, in
the one word, 'Come.' In fact, the Princess declined (and very properly)
to expend a postage-stamp on him, or to gratify him with an envelope of
her own inditing, but told me to enclose this minute but inflammatory
document in non-explosive wrappings of my own.

He was to arrive on a certain day in late November. The evening
previous, as we were sitting together, Clarice--who generally prefers
her own society, and I can't blame her--appeared, in our midst (if that
expression is allowable), with an aspect of grim determination. I rose
to give her a chair in the corner, but she sat down where she could see
us and we could look at her. We did so, anxiously expectant, for this
was a most unusual proceeding; and I inwardly resolved to make it easier
for her than she meant to have it. She began with the air of an orator
who reluctantly emerges from seclusion at his country's call,
constrained to deliver matter of pith and moment.

"It is no news that you all have shown me kindness such as passes all
acknowledgment--"

She was not allowed to proceed without hindrance. Jane put forth an
interrupting hand, which the speaker seized and imprisoned in her own:
not that Clarice's is bigger than Jane's, but it possesses some muscular
force. Mabel opened her lips, and one of us--I will not say which--was
obliged to remind her that Miss Elliston had the floor.

"It is not in me to be demonstrative, and I have seemed cold and
thankless--"

"We knew you better than that, dear," came from both.

"--But I knew, I felt it all. Never did a girl without natural
protectors--"

"But you can have a natural protector whenever you like," cried Mabel.
"You might have had any number of them, for years past."

"Well, with or without, no girl ever had, or could have had, more
faithful affection and delicate consid