ow that it would do any good; but it wouldn't do any
harm. Of course it's natural that she should wish to have friends
about her; and it will only be natural too that she should marry some
one."

"She may marry whom she pleases for me."

"She will marry whom she pleases; but I suppose you don't want to see
her money go to the Balls."

"I shouldn't care a straw where her money went," said Thomas
Mackenzie, "if I could only know that this sum which we have had from
her was properly arranged. To tell you the truth, Rubb, I'm ashamed
to look my sister in the face."

"That's nonsense. Her money is as right as the bank; and if in such
matters as that brothers and sisters can't take liberties with each
other, who the deuce can?"

"In matters of money nobody should ever take a liberty with anybody,"
said Mr Mackenzie.

He knew, however, that a great liberty had been taken with his
sister's money, and that his firm had no longer the power of
providing her with the security which had been promised to her.

Mr Mackenzie would take no steps, at his partner's instance, towards
arresting his sister in London; but Mr Rubb was more successful
with Mrs Mackenzie, with whom, during the last month or two, he had
contrived to establish a greater intimacy than had ever previously
existed between the two families. He had been of late a good deal in
Gower Street, and Mrs Mackenzie had found him to be a much pleasanter
and better educated man than she had expected. Such was the language
in which she expressed her praise of him, though I am disposed to
doubt whether she herself was at all qualified to judge of the
education of any man. He had now talked over the affairs of Margaret
Mackenzie with her sister-in-law, and the result of that talking
was that Mrs Mackenzie wrote a letter to Littlebath, pressing Miss
Mackenzie to stay a few days in Gower Street, on her way through
London. She did this as well as she knew how to do it; but still
there was that in the letter which plainly told an apt reader that
there was no reality in the professions of affection made in it. Miss
Mackenzie became well aware of the fact as she read her sister's
words. Available hypocrisy is a quality very difficult of attainment
and of all hypocrisies, epistolatory hypocrisy is perhaps the
most difficult. A man or woman must have studied the matter very
thoroughly, or be possessed of great natural advantages in that
direction, who can so fill a letter with fa