uch
idiotic stories to you, I wish people would mind their own business. Sir
Keith Macleod marry me!"

"Do you mean to say he has never asked you?" Carry said, disengaging
herself, and fixing her eyes on her sister's face.

"Certainly not!" was the decided answer; but all the same, Miss Gertrude
White's forehead and cheeks flushed slightly.

"Then you know that he means to; and that is why you have been writing
to me, day after day, about the romance of the Highlands, and fairy
stories, and the pleasure of people who could live without caring for
the public. Oh, Gerty, why won't you be frank with me, and let me know
the worst at once?"

"If I gave you a box on the ears," she said, laughing, "that would be
the worst at once; and I think it would serve you right for listening to
such tittle-tattle and letting your head be filled with nonsense.
Haven't you sufficient sense to know that you ought not to compel me to
speak of such a thing--absurd as it is? I cannot go on denying that I am
about to become the wife of Tom, Dick, or Harry; and you know the
stories that have been going about for years past. Who was I last? The
wife of a Russian nobleman who gambled away all my earnings at Homburg.
You are fourteen now, Carry; you should have more sense."

Miss Carry dried her eyes; but she mournfully shook her head. There were
the otter-skins lying on the table. She had seen plenty of the absurd
paragraphs about her sister which good-natured friends had cut out of
provincial and foreign papers and forwarded to the small family at South
Bank. But the mythical Russian nobleman had never sent a parcel of
otter-skins. These were palpable and not to be explained away. She
sorrowfully left the room, unconvinced.

And now Miss Gertrude White set to work with a will; and no one who was
only familiar with her outside her own house would have recognized in
this shifty, practical, industrious person, who went so thoroughly into
all the details of the small establishment, the lady who, when she went
abroad among the gayeties of the London season, was so eagerly sought
after, and flattered, and petted, and made the object of all manner of
delicate attentions. Her father, who suspected that her increased
devotion to these domestic duties was but part of that rebellious spirit
she had recently betrayed, had nevertheless to confess that there was no
one but herself whom he could trust to arrange his china and dust his
curiosities. And ho