oom.

'Poor fellow! how he feels it! That poor young creature!' said she,
catching up the letter for explanation.

'Ha! No! Listen to this, Dr. Henley. Why, he must have read it wrong!'

'Hollywell, March 5th.

'DEAR PHILIP,--I have to announce to you that Lady Morville was safely
confined this morning with a daughter. I shall be ready to send all the
papers and accounts of the Redclyffe estate to any place you may appoint
as soon as she is sufficiently recovered to transact business. Both she
and the infant are as well as can be expected.

--Yours sincerely,
'C. EDMONSTONE.'

'A daughter!' cried Dr. Henley. 'Well, my dear, I congratulate you! It
is as fine a property as any in the kingdom. We shall see him pick up
strength now.'

'I must go and find him. He surely has mistaken!' said Margaret,
hastening in search of him; but he was not to be found, and she saw him
no more till she found him in the seat at church.

She hardly waited to be in the churchyard, after the service, before she
said, 'Surely you mistook the letter!'

'No, I did not.'

'You saw that she is doing well, and it is a girl.'

'I--'

'And will you not let me congratulate you?'

She was interrupted by some acquaintance; but when she looked round he
was nowhere to be seen, and she was obliged to be content with telling
every one the news. One or two of her many tame gentlemen came home
with her to luncheon, and she had the satisfaction of dilating on the
grandeur of Redclyffe. Her brother was not in the drawing-room, but
answered when she knocked at his door.

'Luncheon is ready. Will you come down?'

'Is any one there?'

'Mr. Brown and Walter Maitland. Shall I send you anything, or do you
like to come down?'

'I'll come, thank you,' said he, thus secured from a tete-a-tete.

'Had you better come? Is not your head too bad?'

'It will not be better for staying here; I'll come.'

She went down, telling her visitors that, since his illness, her brother
always suffered so much from excitement that he was too unwell to have
derived much pleasure from the tidings: and when he appeared his air
corresponded with her account, for his looks were of the gravest and
sternest. He received the congratulations of the gentlemen without
the shadow of a smile, and made them think him the haughtiest and most
dignified landed proprietor in England.

Mrs. Henley advised strongly against his going to church, but