Willansborough, his mother, while riding with her two youngest boys,
met with an accident so severe, that in two years she had never
quitted the morning-room, whither she had at first been carried.
She was daily lifted to a couch, but she could endure no further
motion, though her general health had become good, and her
cheerfulness made her room pleasant to her sons when the rest of the
house was very dreary to them.

Raymond, always the home son, would never have absented himself but
for his parliamentary duties, and vibrated between London and home,
until, when his mother had settled into a condition that seemed
likely to be permanent, and his two youngest brothers were at home,
reading each for his examination, the one for a Government
clerkship, the other for the army, he yielded to the general
recommendation, and set out for a journey on the Continent.

A few weeks later came the electrifying news of his engagement to
his second cousin, Cecil Charnock. It was precisely the most
obvious and suitable of connections. She was the only child of the
head of the family of which his father had been a cadet, and there
were complications of inheritance thus happily disposed of. Mrs.
Poynsett had not seen her since her earliest childhood; but she was
known to have been educated with elaborate care, and had been taken
to the Continent as the completion of her education, and there
Raymond had met her, and sped so rapidly with his wooing, that he
had been married at Venice just four weeks previously.

Somewhat less recent was the wedding of the second son Commander
Miles Charnock. (The younger sons bore their patronymic alone.)
His ship had been stationed at the Cape and there, on a hunting
expedition up the country, he had been detained by a severe illness
at a settler's house; and this had resulted in his marrying the
eldest daughter, Anne Fraser. She had spent some months at Simon's
Bay while his ship was there, and when he found himself under orders
for the eastern coast of Africa, she would fain have awaited him at
Glen Fraser; but he preferred sending her home to fulfil the mission
of daughterhood to his own mother.

The passage had been long and unfavourable, and the consequences to
her had been so serious that when she landed she could not travel
until after a few days' rest.

The marriage of the third son had been a much greater surprise.
Compton Poynsett was not a family living; but the patron, hearing of