ancaster, and God knows what
besides, which it was a thousand pities to throw away.

The father and mother sat by the fireplace that was spanned by the four-
centred arch bearing the family shields on its haunches, and groaned
aloud--the lady more than Sir John.

'To think this should have come upon us in our old age!' said he.

'Speak for yourself!' she snapped through her sobs. 'I am only one-and-
forty! . . . Why didn't ye ride faster and overtake 'em!'

In the meantime the young married lovers, caring no more about their
blood than about ditch-water, were intensely happy--happy, that is, in
the descending scale which, as we all know, Heaven in its wisdom has
ordained for such rash cases; that is to say, the first week they were in
the seventh heaven, the second in the sixth, the third week temperate,
the fourth reflective, and so on; a lover's heart after possession being
comparable to the earth in its geologic stages, as described to us
sometimes by our worthy President; first a hot coal, then a warm one,
then a cooling cinder, then chilly--the simile shall be pursued no
further. The long and the short of it was that one day a letter, sealed
with their daughter's own little seal, came into Sir John and Lady
Grebe's hands; and, on opening it, they found it to contain an appeal
from the young couple to Sir John to forgive them for what they had done,
and they would fall on their naked knees and be most dutiful children for
evermore.

Then Sir John and his lady sat down again by the fireplace with the four-
centred arch, and consulted, and re-read the letter. Sir John Grebe, if
the truth must be told, loved his daughter's happiness far more, poor
man, than he loved his name and lineage; he recalled to his mind all her
little ways, gave vent to a sigh; and, by this time acclimatized to the
idea of the marriage, said that what was done could not be undone, and
that he supposed they must not be too harsh with her. Perhaps Barbara
and her husband were in actual need; and how could they let their only
child starve?

A slight consolation had come to them in an unexpected manner. They had
been credibly informed that an ancestor of plebeian Willowes was once
honoured with intermarriage with a scion of the aristocracy who had gone
to the dogs. In short, such is the foolishness of distinguished parents,
and sometimes of others also, that they wrote that very day to the
address Barbara had given them, informing her t