y
other girl?" asked Fred.

"Different, you mean, from what he _supposes_ every other girl to be,"
Algitha corrected. "It's his own look-out if he's such a fool."

"I believe Hadria married because she was sick of being the family
consolation," said Ernest.

"Well, of course, the hope of escape was very tempting. You boys don't
know what she went through. We all regret her marriage to Hubert
Temperley--though between ourselves, not more than _he_ regrets it, if I
am not much mistaken--but it is very certain that she could not have
gone on living at home much longer, as things were."

Fred said that she ought to have broken out after Algitha's fashion, if
it was so bad as all that.

"I think mother would have died if she had," said the sister.

"Hadria _was_ awkwardly placed," Fred admitted.

"Do you remember that evening in the garret when we all told her what we
thought?" asked Ernest.

Nobody had forgotten that painful occasion.

"She said then that if the worst came to the worst, she would simply run
away. What could prevent her?"

"That wretched sister of his!" cried Algitha. "If it hadn't been for
her, the marriage would never have taken place. She got the ear of
mother after the engagement, and I am certain it was through her
influence that mother hurried the wedding on so. If only there had been
a little more time, it could have been prevented. And Henriette knew
that. She is as _knowing_----!"

"I wish we had strangled her."

"I shall never forget," Algitha went on, "that night when Hadria was
taken with a fit of terror--it was nothing less--and wrote to break off
the engagement, and that woman undertook to deliver the letter and lost
it, _on purpose_ I am always convinced, and then the favourable moment
was over."

"What made her so anxious for the marriage beats me," cried Ernest. "It
was not a particularly good match from a mercenary point of view."

"She thought us an interesting family to marry into," suggested Fred,
"which is undeniable."

"Then she must be greatly disappointed at seeing so little of us!" cried
Ernest.

In the early days, Miss Temperley had stayed frequently at the Red
House, and Hadria had been cut off from her own family, who detested
Henriette.

For a year or more, there had been a fair promise of a successful
adjustment of the two incongruous natures in the new conditions. They
both tried to keep off dangerous ground and to avoid collisions of will.
They made th