t pleasant
to him; Mrs. Deerhurst was always looked on as a designing widow, who
managed to marry off her daughters cleverly, and he could believe no
good of Emily.

Now Adela always had more power with papa than any of us. She had a
coaxing way, which his stately old-school courtesy never could resist.
She used when we were children to beg for holidays, and get treats for
us; and even now, many a request which we should never have dared to
utter, she could, with her droll arch way, make him think the most
sensible thing in the world.

What odd things people can do who have lived together like brothers and
sisters! I can hardly help laughing when I think of Torwood coming
disconsolately up from the library, and replying, in answer to our
vigorous demands, that his lordship had some besotted notion past all
reason.

Then we pressed him harder--Adela with indignation, and I with
sympathy--till we forced out of him that he had been forbidden ever to
think or speak again of Emily, and all his faith in her laughed to
scorn, as delusions induced by Mrs. Deerhurst.

"I'm sure I hope you'll take Ormerod, Adela," I remember he ended;
"then at least you would be out of the way."

For Sir John Ormerod's courtship was an evident fact to all the family,
as, indeed, Adela was heiress enough to be a good deal troubled with
suitors, though she had hitherto managed to make them all keep their
distance.

Adela laughed at him for his kind wishes, but I could see she meant to
plead for him. She had her chance, for Sir John Ormerod brought
matters to a crisis at the next ball; and though she thought, as she
said, "she had settled him," he followed it up with her guardian, and
Adela was invited to a conference in the library.

It happened that as she ran upstairs, all in a glow, she came on
Torwood at the landing. She couldn't help saying in her odd
half-laughing, half-crying voice--

"It will come right, Torwood; I've made terms, I'm out of your way."

"Not Ormerod!" he exclaimed.

"Oh! no, no!" I can hear her dash of scorn now, for I was just behind
my brother, but she went on out of breath--

"You may go on seeing her, provided you don't say a word--till--till
she's been out two years."

"Adela! you queen of girls, how have you done it?" he began, but she
thrust him aside and flew up into my arms; and when I had her in her
own room it came out, I hardly know how, that she had so shown that she
cared for no one she ha