stopped, looking me
full in the face. I had never heard her call my father Dr. Dobree in my
life. She was very fond of him, and attracted by him, as most women
were, and as few women are attracted by me. Even now, with all the
difference in our age, the advantage being on my side, it was seldom I
succeeded in pleasing as much as he did. I gazed back in amazement at
Julia's dark and moody face.

"What now?" I asked. "What has my unlucky father been doing now?"

"Why," she exclaimed, stamping her foot, while the blood mantled to her
forehead, "Dr. Dobree is in haste to take a second wife! He is indeed,
my poor Martin. He wishes to be married immediately to that viper, Kate
Daltrey."

"Impossible!" I cried, stung to the quick by these words. I remembered
my mother's mild, instinctive dislike to Kate Daltrey, and her harmless
hope that I would not go over to her side. Go over to her side! No. If
she set her foot into this house as my mother's successor, I would never
dwell under the same roof. As soon as my father made her his wife I
would cut myself adrift from them both. But he knew that; he would never
venture to outrage my mother's memory or my feelings in such a flagrant
manner.

"It is possible, for it is true," said Julia. She had not let her voice
rise above its low, angry key, and now it sank nearly to a whisper, as
she glanced round at the door. "They have understood each other these
four weeks. You may call it an engagement, for it is one; and I never
suspected them, not for a moment! He came down to my house to be
comforted, he said: his house was so dreary now. And I was as blind as a
mole. I shall never forgive myself, dear Martin. I knew he was given to
all that kind of thing, but then he seemed to mourn for my poor aunt so
deeply, and was so heart-broken. He made ten times more show of it than
you did. I have heard people say you bore it very well, and were quite
unmoved, but I knew better. Everybody said _he_ could never get over it.
Couldn't you take out a commission of lunacy against him? He must be mad
to think of such a thing."

"How did you find it out?" I inquired.

"Oh, I was so ashamed!" she said. "You see I had not the faintest shadow
of a suspicion. I had left them in the drawing-room to go up-stairs, and
I thought of something I wanted, and went back suddenly, and there they
were--his arm around her waist, and her head on his shoulder--he with
his gray hairs too! She says she is the same a