to rule over his great house at Kencote.

South Meadshire had rung with the romance, and old Colonel Birket had
not been altogether delighted with his daughter's good fortune, wishing
to spend his last days in peace and not in glory. The wedding had taken
place in London, with a respectable show of relations on the bride's
side and all the accompaniments of semi-military parade on the
bridegroom's. There was no talk of a misalliance on the part of his
friends, nor was there a misalliance, for the Birkets were good enough
people; but the young Squire's six maiden aunts had returned to the
dower-house at Kencote after the wedding and shaken their respective
heads. No good would come of it, they said, and had, perhaps, been a
little disappointed ever afterwards that no harm had come of it, at any
rate to their nephew.

The old Colonel had long since been laid in his grave, and the little
house in the Bathgate Road, now in the respectable occupancy of a
retired druggist, would have seemed as strange a dwelling-place to the
daughters of Herbert Birket, who had prospered exceedingly, as to the
children of Mrs. Clinton of Kencote.

Angela and Beatrice Birket were handsome girls, both of them younger
than Cicely, but with their assured manners and knowledge of the world,
looking older. They had been brought up strictly by their mother, who
had paid great attention to their education. They might have been seen
during their childhood on any reasonably fine afternoon walking in
Kensington Gardens or Hyde Park with a highly priced French governess,
two well, but plainly dressed children with long, straight hair and
composed faces. They never appeared in their mother's drawing-room when
visitors were there, being employed in a room upstairs either at
lessons, or consuming the plainest variety of schoolroom tea. They were
taken sometimes to an afternoon concert, and on very rare occasions to a
play. When they were at home in London, their days were given to their
lessons, with the requisite amount of regular exercise to keep them in
good health. In holiday time, in the summer, at Christmas and at Easter,
they were allowed to run quite wild, in old clothes at some
out-of-the-way seaside place, in country farmhouses, where they
scrambled about on ponies and amongst ducks and chickens, or in the
country houses of their friends and relations, where there were other
children of their age for them to play with. So they had loved the
cou