ear,
calm voice.

"No," says Mrs. Bethune abruptly.

She makes a gesture as if to keep her.

"Not at all. Not at all, dear Margaret. Pray stay, and give me a
little help," says Lady Rylton plaintively.

She pulls forward a little chair near her, as if to show Margaret
that she must say, and Miss Knollys comes quickly to her. Marian
Bethune is Lady Rylton's real niece. Margaret is her niece by
marriage.

A niece to be proud of, in spite of the fact that she is thirty
years of age and still unmarried. Her features, taken separately,
would debar her for ever from being called either pretty or
beautiful; yet there have been many in her life-time who admired
her, and three, at all events, who would have gladly given their all
to call her theirs. Of these one is dead, and one is married, and
one--still hopes.

There had been a fourth. Margaret loved him! Yet he was the only one
whom Margaret should not have loved. He was unworthy in all points.
Yet, when he went abroad, breaking cruelly and indifferently all
ties with her (they had been engaged), Margaret still clung to him,
and ever since has refused all comers for his sake. Her face is long
and utterly devoid of colour; her nose is too large; her mouth a
trifle too firm for beauty; her eyes, dark and earnest, have,
however, a singular fascination of their own, and when she smiles
one feels that one _must_ love her. She is a very tall woman, and
slight, and gracious in her ways. She is, too, a great heiress, and
a woman of business, having been left to manage a huge property at
the age of twenty-two. Her management up to this has been faultless.

"Now, how can I help you?" asks she, looking at Lady Rylton. "What
is distressing you?"

"Oh! you know," says Mrs. Bethune, breaking impatiently into the
conversation. "About Maurice and this girl! This new girl! There,"
contemptuously, "have been so many of them!"

"You mean Miss Bolton," says Margaret, in her quiet way. "Do you
seriously mean," addressing Lady Rylton, "that you desire this
marriage?"

_ "Desire_ it? No. It is a necessity!" says Lady Rylton. "Who could
desire a daughter-in-law of no lineage, and with the most
objectionable tastes? But she has money! That throws a cloak over
all defects."

"I don't think that poor child has so many defects as you fancy,"
says Miss Knollys. "But for all that I should not regard her as a
suitable wife for Maurice."

Mrs. Bethune leans back in her chair and laughs.