e
herself. He believed that the relatives of his lady-love were
robbing her, or that they were, at any rate, taking advantage of her
weakness. If it might be given to him to rescue her and her fortune
from them, then, in such case as that, surely he would get his
reward. The reader will therefore understand why Miss Colza was
anxious to know whether Miss Mackenzie had quarrelled with all the
Balls.

Margaret's face became unusually black when she was told that she
and Mr Maguire had been courting, but she did not contradict the
assertion. She did, however, express her opinion of that gentleman.

"He is a mean, false, greedy man," she said, and then paused a
moment; "and he has been the cause of my ruin." She would not,
however, explain what she meant by this, and left the house, without
going back to the room in which Miss Colza was sitting.

About a week afterwards she got a letter from Mr Slow, in which that
gentleman,--or rather the firm, for the letter was signed Slow and
Bideawhile,--asked her whether she was in want of immediate funds.
The affair between her and her cousin was not yet, they said, in a
state for final settlement, but they would be justified in supplying
her own immediate wants out of the estate. To this she sent a reply,
saying that she had money for her immediate wants, but that she would
feel very grateful if anything could be done for Mrs Mackenzie and
her family. Then she got a further letter, very short, saying that a
half-year's interest on the loan had, by Mr Ball's consent, been paid
to Mrs Mackenzie by Rubb and Mackenzie.

On the day following this, when she was sitting up in her bedroom,
Mrs Protheroe came to her, dressed in wonderful habiliments. She
wore a dark-blue bonnet, filled all round with yellow flowers, and a
spotted silk dress, of which the prevailing colour was scarlet. She
was going, she said, to St Mary-le-Strand, "to be made Mrs Buggins
of." She tried to carry it off with bravado when she entered the
room, but she left it with a tear in her eye, and a whimper in her
throat. "To be sure, I'm an old woman," she said before she went.
"Who has said that I ain't? Not I; nor yet Buggins. We is both of us
old. But I don't know why we is to be desolate and lonely all our
days, because we ain't young. It seems to me that the young folks is
to have it all to themselves, and I'm sure I don't know why." Then
she went, clearly resolved, that as far as she was concerned, the
young