and phrases whose meaning slipped away from her. She
prayed in her own words for guidance, but none came. There existed only
the tumult of feeling.

She heard her father and brother come up to bed and held her breath in
momentary terror, then breathed relief at the thought that if they
should, unaccountably, break into her room, which they were not in the
least likely to do, they could not know what was happening to her, or
make her tell them. They went along the corridor talking loudly. She had
often been disturbed from her first sleep by the noise the men made
coming up to bed. She heard a sentence from her father as they passed
her door. "They would have to turn out anyhow if anything happened to
me."

Dick's answer was inaudible, but she knew quite well what they were
discussing. It had been discussed before her mother and herself, and
even the twins and Miss Bird, though not before the servants, during the
last few days. Lord and Lady Alistair MacLeod, she a newly wed American,
had motored through Kencote, lunched at the inn and fallen in love with
the dower-house. Lady Alistair--_he_ would have nothing to do with
it--had made an offer through the Squire's agent for a lease of the
house, at a rental about four times its market value. The Squire did not
want the money, but business was business. And the MacLeods would be
"nice people to have about the place." All that stood in the way was
Aunt Ellen and Aunt Laura. They could not be turned out unless they were
willing to go, but the Squire knew very well that they _would_ go if he
told them to. There was a nice little house in the village which would
be the very thing for them if he decided to accept the tempting offer.
He would do it up for them. After all, the dower-house was much too
large and there were only two of them left. So it had been discussed
whether Aunt Ellen, at the age of ninety-three, and Aunt Laura, at the
age of seventy-five, should be notified that the house in which they had
spent the last forty years of their lives, and in which their four
sisters had died, was wanted for strangers.

That was not the only thing that had been discussed. The question of
what would be done in various departments of family and estate business
when the Squire should have passed away--his prospective demise being
always referred to by the phrase, "if anything should happen to me"--was
never shirked in the least; and Dick, who would reign as Squire in his
stead, un