turbed the peace already, haven't I?"

"Mr. Brand," said Janetta, gravely, in spite of an exclamation of
protest from her cousin, "I don't think that we are going quite deeply
enough into the matter. There are one or two things that I must say:
there is no one else to say them. Nora is young and foolish, but she is
affectionate and sensitive, and if she once cares for you, you may make
the happiness or the misery of her life. Our dear father told me to take
care of her. And I am not sure that he would have sanctioned her
engagement to you."

"I'd better send Wyvis to talk to you," said Cuthbert, starting up and
nearly upsetting a chair in his eagerness. "I knew he could manage
and--and explain things better than I could. He's well up in the family
affairs. Will you see him now?"

"Now?"

"He's outside waiting. He wouldn't come in. I'll go and send him to you.
No, don't object: there are ever so many things that you two elders had
better talk over together. I must say," said Cuthbert, beginning to
laugh again in his light-hearted way, "that, when I think of Wyvis as a
family man, bent on seeing his younger brother _se ranger_, and you as
Nora's stern guardian, I am seized with an access of uncontrollable
mirth."

He caught up his hat and left the room so quickly that Janetta, taken by
surprise, could not stop him. She tried to follow, but she was too late:
he had rushed off, leaving the hall-door open, and a draught of cold air
was ascending the stairs and causing her stepmother peevishly to remark
that Janetta's visitors were really intolerable. "Who _was_ it, this
time?" she asked of her second daughter Georgie, who was standing at the
window--the mother and her girls being assembled in Mrs. Colwyn's
bedroom, her favorite resort on cold afternoons.

Georgie gave a little giggle--her manners were not perfect, in spite of
a term at Mrs. Smith's superior seminary for young ladies--and answered,
under her breath--

"It was Mr. Cuthbert Brand."

Nora's book fell from her knee. When she picked it up her cheeks were
crimson and her eyes were flashing fire.

"Don't be absurd, Georgie. It was _not_."

"Indeed it was, Nora. I suppose he came to see Janetta, and Janetta has
sent him away. Oh, how he's running, although he is a little lame! He
has caught some one--his brother, I believe it is; and now the brother's
walking back with him."

"I shall go down," said Mrs. Colwyn, with dignity. "It is not at all
proper f