oof while
still a spinster, on the tacit understanding that neither was a subject
for "nonsense" any more. Deb and Mrs Carey were close friends. Deb was
the godmother of the heir. The homelikeness of Wellwood was intensified
by her intercourse, while there, with English Redford and the
descendants of that brother with whom old Mr Pennycuick had been unable
to hit it off--humdrum persons, whose attraction for her lay in their
name and blood, and the fact that they could show her the arms and
portraits of her ancestors and the wainscotted room in which her father
was born. It was to Wellwood that she went to be married. From the old
home of the Careys she was driven to the old church of the Pennycuicks,
full of mouldering monuments to a nearly vanished race; it was buried
in its rural solitude, far from railways and gossip-mongers and
newspaper reporters, and the wedding was as quiet as quiet could be.
Guthrie was acting brother, and gave her away. He never, of course,
disclosed the secret that was his and Francie's, honest brother as he
longed to be; but perhaps, even had she known it, and her own austere
chastity notwithstanding, she might have been broad-minded enough to
judge him kindlier than is the wont of the sex which does not know all,
and have still held him worthy to be to her the friend he was. As she
knew him, she loved him sister-like, and turned to him naturally when
she needed a brother's services. And so it was to him that she wrote
first, at the end of the short wedding-day journey--just to tell him
that she and her bridegroom had arrived safely, and that Claud was
standing the fatigue much better than they could have hoped.

She did not write to Frances until she had her husband on the high
seas. She did not write at all to Mary or Rose, not wishing them to
know of her marriage until she could personally 'break it' to them. It
was not difficult to ensure this, since for many a year they had all
been so separated by their respective circumstances that they were no
longer sisters in the old Redford sense. The business of each was her
own, and not supposed to interest the rest. Only such domestic events
as were of serious moment were formally reported amongst them, and were
never deemed serious enough to use the cable for.

The pair came home very quietly. Sydney was the port of arrival, and
here Deb divined on the part of her husband a desire to be left in
peace--to recruit after laborious travelling in