nd anything that was visible within those white panelled walls.
"Oh, quite happy," Chatty repeated very softly, with that look into
the distance, which only her mother saw.

"That is all very well for the present--but you don't suppose you will
always be quite satisfied and happy with mamma. That is exactly what
Eustace says. I never knew anybody take so little interest in her girls
as mamma does. You will be thrown among the little people here--a curate
in Highcombe, or somebody's son who lives in the town. Mamma, you may
say what you please, but to have a little nobody out of a country
town for a brother-in-law, a person probably with no connections, no
standing, no----" Minnie paused out of mere incapacity to build up the
climax higher.

It is not solely characteristic of women that a small domestic
controversy should excite them beyond every other: but perhaps only a
woman could have felt the high swelling in her breast of that desire to
cast down and utterly confound Minnie and all her pretensions by the
mention of a name--and the contrariety of not being able to do it, and
the secret exultation in the thought of one day cutting her down, down
to the ground, with the announcement. While she was musing her heart
turned to Cavendish--a relation within well-authenticated lines of the
duke, very different from the small nobility of the Thynnes, who on
their side were not at all related to the greater family of the name.
Mrs. Warrender's heart rose with this thought so that it was almost
impossible for her to keep silence, to look at Minnie and not overwhelm
her. But she did refrain, and the consciousness that she had this
unanswerable retort behind kept her, as nothing else could, from losing
her temper. She smiled with a sense of the humour of the situation,
though with a little irritation too.

"It will be very sad, my dear, if Chatty provides Eustace with an
unsuitable brother-in-law; but we must not look so far ahead. There is
no aspirant for the moment who can give your husband any uneasiness.
Perhaps he would like a list of the ineligible young men in the
neighbourhood? there are not very many, from all I can hear."

"Oh, mamma, I never knew any one so unsympathetic as you are," said
Minnie, with an angry flush of colour. Chatty had not stayed to defend
herself. She had hurried away out of reach of the warfare. No desire to
crush her sister with a name was in Chatty's mind. It had seemed to her
profane to spe