or a young person like Janetta to receive gentlemen alone. I
shall go and sit in the drawing-room myself."

"Then Janetta will take her visitors into the dining-room," said Nora,
abruptly. "She has only business with these people, mamma: they don't
come to visit us because they like us--it is only when they want us to
do something for them; so I would not put myself out for them if I were
you. And as for Janetta's being young, she is the oldest person amongst
us." And then Nora turned to her book, which she held upside down
without being at all aware of it.

"I do not know what you mean, Nora," was Mrs. Colwyn's fretful response;
"and if the other brother is coming here, I shall certainly not disturb
myself, for I believe him to be a wild, dissipated, immoral, young man."

"Just the sort of man for Janet to receive alone," murmured Georgie,
maliciously. Georgie was the member of the family who "had a tongue."

Meanwhile Wyvis had come into the house, though without Cuthbert, who
had thought it better to disappear into the gathering darkness; and
Janetta received him in the hall.

He laughed a little as he took her hand. "Cuthbert is a little
impatient, is he not? Well, he has persuaded me into talking this matter
over with you. I'm to come in here, am I?" as Janetta silently opened
the sitting-room door for him. "This looks pleasant," he added after a
moment's pause.

In the gathering evening gloom the shabbiness of the furniture could not
be seen, and the fire-light danced playfully over the worn,
comfortable-looking chairs drawn up to the hearth, on the holly and
mistletoe which decorated the walls, and the great cluster of geranium
and Christmas roses which the Adairs had sent to Janetta the day before.
Everything looked homelike and comfortable, and perhaps it was no wonder
that Wyvis--accustomed to the gloom of his own home, or the garish
splendor of a Paris hotel--felt that he was entering a new sphere, or
undergoing some new experience.

"Don't light the lamp," he said, in his imperious way: "let us talk in
this half-light, if you don't mind? it's pleasanter."

"And easier," said Janetta, softly.

"Easier? Does it need an effort?"

"I am afraid I have something unpleasant to say."

"So have I. We are quits, then. You can begin."

"Your brother has been asking if he maybe engaged to Nora----"

"If he may marry her out of hand, you mean. That's what he wants to do."

"We know very little of him," sa