ot want to turn me out, Aunt Margaret?" Then she went down on her
knees, and, leaning on her aunt's lap, looked up into her face. "If
you will keep me I will try to be good."

"My dear, you are good. I have nothing to complain of. Of course we
will keep you. Nobody has thought for a moment of bidding you go. But
you should understand that when your aunt made the proposition I was
bound to tell it you." Then there was great embracing and kissing,
and Ayala felt that she was relieved from a terrible danger. She had
often declared that no one could make her marry her cousin Tom; but
it had seemed to her for a moment that if she were given up bodily to
the Tringles no mode of escape would be open to her short of suicide.
There had been a moment almost of regret that she had never brought
herself to regard Jonathan Stubbs as an Angel of Light.

At Somerset House Lady Tringle made her suggestion to her brother
with even more flowery assurance of general happiness than she had
used in endeavouring to persuade his wife. Ayala would, of course,
be married to Tom in the course of the next six months, and during
the same period Lucy, no doubt, would be married to that very
enterprising but somewhat obstinate young man, Mr. Hamel. Thus there
would be an end to all the Dormer troubles; "and you, Reginald," she
said, "will be relieved from a burden which never ought to have been
laid upon your shoulder."

"We will think of it," he said very gravely, over and over again.
Beyond that "we will think of it" he could not be induced to utter a
word.

CHAPTER XLI.

"A COLD PROSPECT!"

Three days were allowed to Frank Houston to consider within his own
mind what he would say for himself and what he would propose finally
to do when he should see Miss Docimer on the appointed Sunday. He was
called upon to decide whether, after so many resolutions made to the
contrary, he would now at last bring himself to encounter poverty
and a family,--genteel poverty with about seven hundred and fifty
pounds a-year between himself and his wife. He had hitherto been very
staunch on the subject, and had unfortunately thought that Imogene
Docimer had been as firmly fixed in her determination. His theory had
in itself been good. If two people marry they are likely, according
to the laws of nature, to have very soon more than two. In the
process of a dozen years they may not improbably become ever so many
more than two. Funds which were barely en