twelve years. Maria Leslie had taken life so
easily, and turned such a bright face to all its ups and downs, that
time had rewarded her at forty by making her look six or seven years
younger. A downright pretty woman she was, bright-eyed, bright-cheeked,
bright-haired, and so plump and merry that it was a pleasure to look at
her. Kate Merritt was smaller, darker, more grave, and less attractive
altogether. Doctor Brudenell liked them both, but he preferred the
elder, as most people did. He enjoyed a visit to Petersham Villa--it
was almost the only house with whose inhabitants he was upon really
easy and familiar terms, for he was by nature a shy and retiring man.
He had got into the habit of confiding in cheerful Mrs. Leslie, but he
seldom talked to Kate, who was too diffident to make him forget that he
also was inclined to be shy. Indeed he thought so little about her that
he had not even a suspicion that in her quiet, cool, self-controlled,
persistent way, she had made up her mind to marry him. Mrs. Leslie did
know it, and often rated her sister soundly on the subject, with even a
touch of contempt sometimes.

"You are most absurd to keep that silly notion fixed in your head!" she
would declare, impatiently. "He doesn't care a straw for you, child!
Haven't you wit enough to see that? If he only knew what a goose you
were he'd pay you the compliment of thinking you crazy, I tell you.
He's a good fellow--the best fellow in the world after my Tom--but
there's something odd about him in that way. Can't you see that he
hardly knows one woman from another, you silly child? I don't, for my
part, believe that the man has ever been in love in his life at all."

Mrs. Leslie was penetrative, but in this matter she was wrong; for, if
George Brudenell had been asked, he would probably have confessed that
he had been in love twice. True, his first passion had been conceived
at the age of eighteen, its object being the bosom-friend of his only
sister, a young lady who owned to six-and-twenty, and who had laughed
at him mercilessly when the most startling of valentines had made her
aware of the state of things. Then, years after, when he was nearly
thirty, he had become very fond of the daughter of his partner, a
pretty, gentle, winning creature some half a dozen years younger than
himself, who had girlishly adored him. He had been so fond of her and
so used to her, he had grieved so sincerely when, a month before what
was to have b