ld be married quietly on the day Mrs. Ogilvie had fixed for the
wedding; and then together they would seek the brother who, if he were
still alive, would be brother to them both.

But the Court of Chancery took that reasonable view of the case which,
as it frequently happens, is directly opposed to the view-sentimental.
The Court of Chancery, in fact, refused to sanction the marriage of a
minor with a man without settled prospects, and one whose position in
the world was not confirmed by the possession either of money or of
lands. At the age of twenty-five Miss Erskine might do as she liked;
until then the Court of Chancery decided that she should divide her
time each year between her two guardians, with whom she had always
lived. No protests were of any avail, and wise relations and friends
were agreed in thinking that it was better to postpone the marriage, at
least for a time.

The autumn passed miserably. Peter went to Juarez first of all, and
proved to be substantially true what at first he had supposed might
have been the disordered fancy of a sick woman's mind. There was no
record of the death of Edward Ogilvie, nor did any entry in registers
show the name of an English child in the year when he was supposed to
have died. No little grave in the cemetery marked his resting-place.
One fact, at least, seemed established, and that was that Peter's elder
brother had not died in infancy at Juarez.

Not much more than this could be proved, and Peter returned home to
find that for the present nothing was legally his. Pending inquiries
Bowshott was closed. Those who were in ignorance of the real state of
affairs talked glibly of enormous death-duties which had crippled, for
a time, even the immense Ogilvie estates, and had rendered it necessary
for Peter to shut up the house and live economically. The countryside,
which called itself gay, met at many little parties and talked
charitably of the woman who was gone, saying, with an unconscious sense
of patronage, that they had always liked Mrs. Ogilvie in spite of her
faults. Death, the great leveller, had brought their unapproachable
neighbour nearer to them; they were not afraid of her now. It was
strange to think that she was really less than one of themselves in the
cold isolation and the pathetic impotence of the grave. They could
hardly picture her yet as a powerless thing--the keen, narrowing eyes
closed, the sharp-edged poniard of her speech for ever she