, looking out of the
window to looking her brother in the face.

"Something must be done for the younger girls," she announced. "I feel
pretty confident about Emily's future. We need not go into that.
Maggie, if she marries at all--and she really is very useful at home,
in looking after the servants and entertaining, and so on--if she
marries at all, will marry late. She has no particular attractions as
girls go. Her figure is too solid, and she talks too much. But she will
make a very presentable middle-aged woman--sensible, dependable, an
excellent _menagere_. Certainly she had better marry late."

"A mature clergyman when she is rising forty--a widowed bishop, for
instance. Yes, I approve that," Mr. Quayle rejoined reflectively. "It
is well conceived, Louisa. We must keep an eye on the Bench and
carefully note any episcopal matrimonial vacancy. Bishops have a little
turn, I observe, for marrying somebody who _is_ somebody--specially _en
secondes noces_, good men. Yes, it is well thought of. With careful
steering we may bring Maggie to anchor in a palace yet. Maggie is
rather dogmatic, she would make not half a bad Mrs. Proudie. So she is
disposed of, and then?"

For a few seconds the lady held silent converse with herself. At last
she addressed her companion in tones of unwonted cordiality.

"You are by far the most sensible of the family, Ludovic," she began.

"And in a family so renowned for intellect, so conspicuous for 'parts
and learning,' as Macaulay puts it, that is indeed a distinction!"--Mr.
Quayle bowed slightly in his comfortable corner. "A thousand thanks,
Louisa," he murmured.

"I would not breathe a syllable of this to any of the others," she
continued. "You know how the girls chatter. Alicia, I am sorry to say,
is as bad as any of them. They would discuss the question without
intermission--simply, you know, talk the whole thing to death."

"Poor thing!--Yet, after all, what thing?" the young man inquired
urbanely.

Lady Louisa bit her lip. He was very irritating, while she was very
much in earnest. It was her misfortune usually to be a good deal in
earnest.

"There is Constance," she remarked, somewhat abruptly.

"Precisely--there is poor, dear, innocent, rather foolish, little
Connie. It occurred to me we might be coming to that."

In his turn Mr. Quayle fell silent, and contemplated the reeling
landscape. Pasture had given place to wide stretches of dark moorland
on either side the rail