old souls are comfortable; and if they are good, so much the better; and I am glad you like it, my dear; but whatever you think, you should not talk in this way. Eh, Stevens, what do you say?"

"If I might make so bold, ma'am," said the butler, 'not to go again Miss Augustine; but that hold Missis Matthews, mum, she's a hold

"Silence, sir," said Miss Susan promptly, "I don't want to hear any gossip; my sister knows best. Tell Everard about your schools, my dear; the parish must be the better of the schools. Whatever the immediate motive is, so long as the thing is good," said this casuist, "and whatever the occasional result may be, so long as the meaning is charitable-There, there, Everard, I won't have her crossed."

This was said hastily in an undertone to Everard, who was shaking his head, with a suppressed laugh on his face.

"I am not objecting to anything that is done, but to your reasoning, which is defective," he said.

"Oh, my reasoning! is that all? I don't stand upon my reasoning," said Miss Susan. And then there was a pause in the conversation, for Miss Susan's mind was perturbed, and she talked but in fits and starts, having sudden intervals of silence, from which she would as suddenly emerge into animated discussion, then be still again all in a moment. Miss Augustine, in her long limp grey dress, with pale hands coming out of the wide hanging sleeves, talked only on one subject, and did not eat at all, so that her company was not very cheerful. And Everard could not but glance up now and then to the gallery, which lay in deep shade, and feel as if he were in a dream, seated down below in the light. How vividly the childish past had come upon him; and how much more cheerful it had been in those old days, when the three atoms in the dusty corner of the gallery looked down with laughing eyes upon the solemn people at table, and whispered and rustled in their restlessness till they were found out!

At last-and this was something so wonderful that even the servants who waited at table were appalled— Miss Augustine recommenced the conversation. "You have had some one here to-day," she said. "FarrelAustin-I met him."

"Yes!" said Miss Susan breathless and alarmed.

"It seemed to me that the shadow had fallen upon them already. He is grey and changed. I have not seen him for a long time; his wife is ill, and his children are delicate."

"Nonsense, Austine, the girls are as strong and well as a couple of hoydens need be." Miss Susan spoke almost sharply, and in a half-frightened tone.

"You think so, Susan; for my part I saw the shadow plainly. It is that their time is drawing near to inherit. Perhaps as they are girls, nothing will happen to them; nothing ever happened to us; that is to say, they will not marry probably; they will be as we have been. I wish to know them, Susan. Probably one of them would take up my work, and endeavour to keep further trouble from the house."

"Farrel's daughter? you are very good, Austine, very good; you put me to shame," said Miss Susan bending her head.

"Yes; why not Farrel's daughter? She is a woman like the rest of us, and an Austin, like the rest of us. I wish the property could pass to women, then there might be an end of it once for all."

"In that case it would go to Reine, and there would not in the least be an end of it; quite the reverse."

"I could persuade Reine," said Miss Augustine. "Ah, yes; I could persuade her. She knows my life. She knows about the family, how we have all suffered. Reine would be led by me; she would give it up, as I should have done had I the power. But men will not do such a thing. I am not blaming them. I am saying what is the fact. Reine would have given it up."

"You speak like a visionary," said Miss Susan sighing. "Yes, I dare say Reine would be capable of a piece of

folly, or you, or even myself. We do things that seem right to us at the moment without taking other things into consideration, when we are quite free to do what we like. But don't you see, my dear, a man with an entailed estate is not free? His son or his heir must come after him, as his father went before him; he is only a kind of tenant. Farrel, since you have spoken of Farrel-I would not have begun it-dare not alienate the property from Everard; and Everard, when it comes to him, must keep it for his son, if he ever has one."

"The thing would be," said Miss Augustine, "to make up your mind never to have one, Everard." She looked at him calmly and gravely, crossing her hands within her long sleeves.

"But, my dear Aunt Augustine," said Everard laughing, "what good would that do me? I should have to hand it on to the next in the entail all the same. I could not do away with the estate without the consent of my heir at least."

"Then I will tell you what to do," said Miss Augustine. "Marry; it is different from what I said just now, but it has the same meaning. Marry at once; and when you have a boy let him be sent to me. I will train him, I will show him his duty; and then with his consent, which he will be sure to give when he grows up, you can break the entail and restore Whiteladies to its right owner. Do this, my dear boy, it is quite simple; and so at last shall have the satisfaction of feeling that the curse will be ended one day. Yes; the thing to be done is this."

Miss Susan had exclaimed in various tones of impatience. She had laughed reluctantly when Everard laughed; but what her sister said was more serious to her than it was to the young man. "Do you mean to live for ever," she said at last, "that you calculate so calmly on bringing up Everard's son ?"

"I am fifty-five," said Miss Augustine, "and Everard might have a son in a year. Probably I shall live to seventy-five, at least-most of the women of our family do. He would then be twenty, approaching his majority.

There is nothing extravagant in it; and on the whole, it seems to me the most hopeful thing to do. You must marry, Everard, without delay; and if you want money I will help you. I will do anything for an object so near my heart."

"You had better settle whom I am to marry, Aunt Augustine."

Everard's laughter made the old walls gay. He entered into the joke without any arrière-pensée; the suggestion amused him beyond measure; all the more that it was made with so much gravity and solemnity. Miss Susan had laughed too; but now she became slightly alarmed, and watched her sister with troubled eyes.

"Whom you are to marry? That wants consideration," said Miss Augustine. "The sacrifice would be more complete and satisfying if two branches of the family concurred in making it. The proper person for you to marry in the circumstances would be, either-"

"Austine!"

"Yes! I am giving the subject my best attention. You cannot understand, no one can understand, how all-important it is to me. Everard, either one of Farrel's girls, to whom I bear no malice, or perhaps Reine."

66

"Austine, you are out of your senses on this point," said Miss Susan, almost springing from her seat and disturbing suddenly the calm of the talk. Come, come, we must retire; we have dined. Everard, if you choose to sit a little, Stevens is giving you some very good claret. It was my father's; I can answer for it, much better than I can answer for my own, for I am no judge. You will find us in the west room when you are ready, or in the garden. It is almost too sweet to be indoors to-night."

She drew her sister's arm within hers and led her away, with a peremptory authority which permitted no argument, and to which Augustine instinctively yielded; and Everard remained alone, his cheek tingling, his heart

beating. It had all been pure amusement up to this point; but even his sense of the ludicrous could not carry him further. He might have known, he said to himself, that this was what she must say. He blushed, and felt it ungenerous in himself to have allowed her to go so far, to propose these names to him. He seemed to be making the girls endure a humiliation against his will, and without their knowledge. What had they done that he should permit any one even to suggest that he could choose among them? This was the more elevated side of his feelings; but there was another side, I am obliged to allow, a fluttered, flattered consciousness that the suggestion might be true; that he might have it in his power, like a sultan, to choose among them, and throw his princely handkerchief at the one he preferred. A mixture therefore of some curious sense of elation and suppressed pleasure, mingled with the more generous feeling within him, quenching at once the ridicule of Miss Augustine's proposal, and the sense of wrong done to those three girls. Yes, no doubt, it is a man's privilege to choose; he, and not the woman, has it in his power to weigh the qualities of one and another, and to decide which would be most fit for the glorious position of his wife. They could not choose him, but he could choose one of them, and on his choice probably their future fate would depend. It was impossible not to feel a little pleasant flutter of consciousness. He was not vain, but he felt the sweetness of the superiority involved, the greatness of the position. When the ladies were gone Everard laughed, all alone by himself, he could not help it; and the echoes took up the laughter, and rang into that special corner of the gallery which he knew so well, centring there. Why there, of all places in the world? Was it some ghost of little Reine in her childhood that laughed ? Reine in her childhood had been the one who exercised choice. It was she who might have thrown the handkerchief, not Everard. And then a hush came over him, and a compunction, as he thought where Reine was at this moment, and how she might