you as much as
the first. Your sister Mary is going to marry Mr. Hartington. The matter
was settled in Paris, where they have both been shut up during the
siege."

"That is, indeed, good news," Mrs. Brander said cordially, foreseeing at
once the advantage of such a marriage.

The girls took their cue from her, and professed great pleasure at the
news which, however, was not altogether welcome to them.

Mary, whom they had never liked, was to be mistress of Fairclose, and
was to gain all the advantages that they had expected but had never
obtained. The thought was not pleasant, but it was speedily forgotten in
the excitement of the other news. Her mother, however, seeing the
pleasure that her husband unmistakably felt at the thought of the
marriage, was genuinely pleased. Not only might the connection be useful
to the girls, but it might be invaluable in covering their retirement
from Fairclose. There might be something more about that than her
husband had said. At any rate this would silence all tongues and put an
end to the vague anxiety that she had long felt. She had always liked
Cuthbert, and had long ago cherished a faint hope that he might some day
take to Mary.

"This all comes very suddenly upon us, Mr. Hartington. I suppose I ought
to call you Cuthbert again, now."

"It would certainly sound more like old times, Mrs. Brander."

"Only think, my dear," the lawyer put in, "he proposed to Mary more than
two years ago and she refused him. I suppose she never told you?"

"She never said a word on the subject," Mrs. Brander said, almost
indignantly. "Why, it must have been before----" and she stopped.

"Before my short reign here as master, Mrs. Brander. Yes, I was down at
Newquay sketching, when she was staying with her friend, Miss Treadwyn,
and Mary was at the time too much occupied with the idea of raising
womankind in the scale of humanity to think of taking up with a useless
member of society like myself."

Mrs. Brander shook her head very gravely.

"It was a sad trouble to her father and myself," she said; "I hope she
has got over those ideas."

"I think she has discovered that the world is too large for her to
move," Cuthbert replied, with a smile. "At any rate she has undertaken
the task of looking after me instead of reforming the world; it may be
as difficult, perhaps, but it sounds less arduous."

At lunch the girls were engaged in an animated discussion as to where
they would like to move