deal more than worthy of my uncle Francis.
Only papa, who dislikes them both, would like to make it out that the
two of them are going to cut their own throats each by marrying the
other. I wish papa could have heard the way in which she said that
he would have to marry them,--unless the Bishop should like to come
forward and perform the ceremony."

"I shall do nothing of the kind," said the Dean angrily.

"If you had heard," continued his daughter, "all that she had to
say about the family name and the family property, and the family
grandeur generally, you would have thought her the most becoming
young woman in the country to be the future Lady Geraldine."

"I wish you wouldn't talk of it, my dear," said Mrs. Hippesley.

"We shall have to talk of it, and had better become used to it among
ourselves. I don't suppose that Miss Altifiorla has invented the
story out of her own head. She would not say that she was engaged to
marry my uncle if it were not true."

"It's my belief," said the Dean, getting up and walking out of the
room in great anger, "that Sir Francis Geraldine will never marry
Miss Altifiorla."

"I don't think my brother will ever marry Miss Altifiorla," said Mrs.
Dean. "He is very silly and very vicious, but I don't think he'll
ever do anything so bad as that."

"Poor Miss Altifiorla!" said Mrs. Thorne afterwards to her Aunt
Forrester.

That same evening Miss Altifiorla, feeling that she had broken the
ice, and, oppressed by the weight of the secret which was a secret
still in every house in Exeter except the Deanery, wrote to her other
friend Mrs. Green, and begged her to come down. She had tidings to
tell of the greatest importance. So Mrs. Green put on her bonnet and
came down. "My dear," said Miss Altifiorla, "I have something to tell
you. I am going to be--"

"Not married!" said Mrs. Green.

"Yes, I am. How very odd that you should guess. But yet when I come
to think of it I don't know that it is odd. Because after all there
does come a time in,--a lady's life when it is probable that she
will marry." Miss Altifiorla hesitated, having in the first instance
desired to use the word girl.

"That's as may be," said Mrs. Green. "Your principles used to be on
the other side."

"Of course all that changes when the opportunity comes. It wasn't so
much that I disliked the idea of marriage, for myself, as that I was
proud of the freedom which I enjoyed. However that is all over. I am
free no lo