really?'

'Really! Kindred blood signally failed to speak.'

Clara took a turn up and down the room. 'I say, Louis, ought I to go
down?'

'No; leave him and granny to their happiness,' said Louis; and James,
at the same moment running up, threw himself into a chair, with an
emphatic 'There!'

'Dear grandmamma!' said Isabel; 'I hope it is not too much for her.'

James made no answer.

'Are you disappointed in him, dear James?' she continued.

'I could not be disappointed,' he answered, shortly.

'Poor man--he has a poor welcome among you,' said Louis.

'Welcome is not to be bought,' said James. 'I could not stand hearing
him reply to poor granny's heartfelt rapture with his riches and his
Cheveleigh, as if that were all she could prize.'

Steps were mounting the stairs, and the alert, sharp tones of Oliver
were heard--'Married then? Should have waited--done it in style.'

James and Isabel glanced at each other in amused indignation; and Mrs.
Frost entered, tremulous with joy, and her bright hazel eyes lustrous
with tears, as she leant on the arm of her recovered son. He was a
little, spare, shrivelled man, drolly like his nephew, but with all the
youthfulness dried out of him, the freckles multiplied by scores, and
the keen black eyes sunken, sharpened, and surrounded with innumerable
shrewd puckers. The movements were even more brisk, as if time were
money; and in speech, the small change of particles was omitted, and
every word seemed bitten off short at the end; the whole man, in
gesture, manner, and voice, an almost grotesque caricature of all
James's peculiarities.

'Mrs. Roland Dynevor, I presume? said Oliver, as Isabel came forward to
meet him.

'Never so known hitherto,' returned her husband. 'My wife is Mrs.
James Frost, if you please.'

'That is over now,' said Oliver, consequentially; and as his mother
presented to him 'poor Henry's little Clara,' he kissed her
affectionately, saying, 'Well-grown young lady, upon my word! Like her
father--that's right.'

'Here is almost another grandchild,' said Mrs. Frost--'Louis
Fitzjocelyn--not much like the Fitzjocelyn you remember, but a new M.P.
as he was then.'

'Humph!' said Oliver, with a dry sound, apparently expressing, 'So that
is what our Parliament is made of. Father well?' he asked.

'Quite well, thank you, sir.'

Oliver levelled his keen eyes on him, as though noting down
observations, while he was burning for tidings of Mary, ye