it ever occurred to you
to think what you are going to _do_?"

"Aunt Emmeline, for the last months it has rarely occurred to me to
think of anything else!"

"Very well then, that's all to the good. As I said to Aunt Eliza, let
us leave her alone till Kathleen has gone. Evelyn is obstinate, and if
you interfere she will only grow more pig-headed. Let her find things
out for herself. Experience, Eliza, will do more than either you or I.
Sooner or later, even Evelyn must realise that you can't run a house,
and garden, and stable, in the same way on half the ordinary income.
Now that Kathleen is married, she naturally takes with her her own
fortune."

She looked at me expectantly, and I smiled, another stiff, marionette
smile--and said:--

"How true! Curiously enough, that fact has already penetrated to my
dull brain!"

"Now I do hope and pray, Evelyn, that you are not going to argue with
me," cried Aunt Emmeline, with a sudden access of energy which was
positively startling. "It's ridiculous saying that because there is
only one mistress instead of two, expense will therefore be halved. I
have kept house for thirty-three years, and have never once allowed an
order at the door, so I may be supposed to know. Nonsense! The rent is
the same, I suppose, and the rates, and the taxes. You must sit down to
a decent meal even if you are alone, and it takes the same fire to cook
four potatoes as eight. Your garden must be kept going, and if you do
away with one horse, you still require a groom, I suppose, to look after
the rest. Don't talk to me of economising; you'd be up to your neck in
debt before a year was over--if you weren't in a lunatic asylum with
nervous depression, living alone in that hole-in-a-corner old house,
with not a soul but servants to speak to from morning till night. You
have a nervous temperament, Evelyn. You may not realise it, but I
remember as a child how you used to fidget and dash about. Dear Kathie
sat still and sucked her thumb. I said at the time, `Evelyn is
better-looking, but mark my words, Kathie will be married first!' And
you see! It's because I love you, my dear, and you are my dear sister's
child that I warn you to beware of living alone in that house!"

"Thank you so much," I said nastily. (When people presage a remark by
saying that they only say it because they love you, you may lay long
odds that it's going to be disagreeable!) "It certainly sounds a
gruesome prosp