You know I always forbid you to gossip.'

'We didn't gossip, mother. We went up to the gardens to get some
mulberries for our half-holiday feast; and Ronaldson came out and told
us we must ask leave first, for the ladies were come. The Squire came
home at nine o'clock last night, and Mrs. Egremont and all, and only
sent a telegram two hours before to have the rooms got ready.'

'Has Uncle Alwyn gone and got himself married?' exclaimed one of the
young ladies, in utter amazement.

'Not just now, Blanche,' said her father. 'It is an old story now.
Your uncle married this lady, who had been governess to May and Mark,
many years ago, and from--circumstances in which she was not at all to
blame, he lost sight of her while he was abroad with old General
Egremont. Mark met her about a fortnight ago, and this has led to your
uncle's going in quest of her, though he has certainly been more sudden
in his proceedings than I expected.'

The mother here succeeded in sending Rosalind and Adela, with their
wondering eyes, off the scene, and she would much have liked to send
her two stepdaughters after them, but one-and-twenty and eighteen could
not so readily be ordered off as twelve and ten; and Mark, who had been
prohibited from uttering a word to his sisters, was eagerly examining
Margaret whether she remembered their Edda; but she had been only three
years old at the time of the adventures in the Isle of Wight, and
remembered nothing distinctly but the aspect of one of the sailors in
the yacht.

'Well,' said Mrs. Egremont, 'this has come very suddenly upon us. It
would have been more for her own dignity if she had held out a little
before coming so easily to terms, after the way in which she has been
treated.'

'When you see her, mother, you will understand,' said Mark.

'Shall we have to be intimate with her?' asked May.

'I desire that she should be treated as a relation,' said the Canon
decidedly. 'There is nothing against her character,' and, as his wife
was about to interrupt,--'nothing but an indiscretion to which she was
almost driven many years ago. She was cruelly treated, and I for one
am heartily sorry for having let myself be guided by others.'

Mrs. William Egremont felt somewhat complacent, for she knew he meant
Lady de Lyonnais, and there certainly had been no love lost between her
and her step-children's grandmother; but she was a sensible woman, and
forbore to speak, though there was a mental re