nd Phoebe reserved her belief that an attachment, nipped in the bud, was
ready to blossom in sunshine. She ran up with the news to her mother.

'Juliana going to be married! Well, my dear, you may be introduced at
once! How comfortable you and I shall be in the little brougham.'

Phoebe begged to be told what the intended was like.

'Let me see--was he the one that won the steeple-chase? No; that was the
one that Augusta liked. We knew so many young men, that I could never
tell which was which; and your sisters were always talking about them
till it quite ran through my poor head, such merry girls as they were!'

'And poor Juliana never was so merry after he was gone.'

'I don't remember,' replied this careful mother; 'but you know she never
could have meant anything, for he had nothing, and you with your fortunes
are a match for anybody! Phoebe, my dear, we must go to London next
spring, and you shall marry a nobleman. I must see you a titled lady as
well as your sisters.'

'I've no objection, provided he is my wise man,' said Phoebe.

Juliana had found the means of making herself welcome, and her marriage a
cause of unmixed jubilation in her family. Prosperity made her affable,
and instead of suppressing Phoebe, she made her useful, and treated her
as a confidante, telling her of all the previous intimacy, and all the
secret sufferings in dear Bevil's absence, but passing lightly over the
last happy meeting, which Phoebe respected as too sacred to be talked of.

The little maiden's hopes of a perfect brother in the constant knight
rose high, and his appearance and demeanour did not disappoint them. He
had a fine soldierly figure, and that air of a thorough gentleman which
Phoebe's Holt experience had taught her to appreciate; his manners were
peculiarly gentle and kind, especially to Mrs. Fulmort; and Phoebe did
not like him the less for showing traces of the effects of wounds and
climate, and a grave, subdued air, almost amounting to melancholy. But
before he had been three days at Beauchamp, Juliana made a virulent
attack on the privileges of her younger sisters. Perhaps it was the
consequence of poor Maria's volunteer to Sir Bevil--'I am glad Juliana is
going with you, for now no one will be cross to me;' but it seemed to
verify the poor girl's words, that she should be hunted like a strange
cat if she were found beyond her own precincts, and that the other two
should be treated much in the same ma