she should decline the alliance with which the Balls proposed to
honour her, then Lady Ball was prepared to be very cool. There would
be an ingratitude in such a proceeding after the open-armed affection
which had been shown to her which Lady Ball could not readily bring
herself to forgive. Sir John, once or twice during the day, took up
his little sarcasms against her supposed religious tendencies at
Littlebath.

"You'll be glad to get back to Mr Stumfold," he said.

"I shall be glad to see him, of course," she answered, "as he is a
friend."

"Mr Stumfold has a great many lady friends at Littlebath," he
continued.

"Yes, a great many," said Miss Mackenzie, understanding well that she
was being bullied.

"What a pity that there can be only one Mrs Stumfold," snarled the
baronet; "it's often a wonder to me how women can be so foolish."

"And it's often a wonder to me," said Miss Mackenzie, "how gentlemen
can be so ill-natured."

She had plucked up her spirits of late, and had resented Sir John's
ill-humour.

At the usual hour Mr Ball came home to dinner, and Miss Mackenzie, as
soon as she saw him, again became fluttered. She perceived that he
was not at his ease, and that made her worse. When he spoke to the
girls he seemed hardly to mind what he was saying, and he greeted his
mother without any whispered tidings as to the share-market of the
day.

Margaret asked herself if it could be possible that anything was very
wrong about her own money. If the worst came to the worst she could
but have lost that two thousand five hundred pounds and she would be
able to live well enough without it. If her brother had asked her for
it, she would have given it to him. She would teach herself to regard
it as a gift, and then the subject would not make her unhappy.

They all came down to dinner, and they all went in to tea, and the
tea-things were taken away, and then John Ball arose. During tea-time
neither he nor Miss Mackenzie had spoken a word, and when she got up
to follow him, there was a solemnity about the matter which ought to
have been ludicrous to any of those remaining, who might chance to
know what was about to happen. It must be supposed that Lady Ball
at any rate did know, and when she saw her middle-aged niece walk
slowly out of the room after her middle-aged son, in order that a
love proposal might be made from one to the other with advantage,
she must, I should think, have perceived the comic nature of