se we
shall be there before May, but we must have the house got ready.
My mother and the girls had better look out for a place as soon as
they can. Tell my mother of course I will allow her the rent of
Cross Hall, to which indeed she is entitled. I don't think she
would care to live there, and neither she nor the girls would get
on with my wife.

"Yours, B.

"I am waiting to know about getting the house painted and
furnished."

When Lord George received this letter, he showed it first in privacy to
his sister Sarah. As the reader will have understood, there had never
been any close family affection between the present Marquis and his
brothers and sisters; nor had he been a loving son to his mother. But
the family at Manor Cross had always endeavoured to maintain a show of
regard for the head of the family, and the old Marchioness would no
doubt have been delighted had her eldest son come home and married an
English wife. Lady Sarah, in performing what she had considered to be a
family duty, had written regular despatches to her elder brother,
telling him everything that happened about the place,--despatches which
he, probably, never read. Now there had come a blow indeed. Lady Sarah
read the letter, and then looked into her brother's face.

"Have you told Mary?" she asked.

"I have told no one."

"It concerns her as much as any of us. Of course, if he has married, it
is right that he should have his house. We ought to wish that he should
live hero."

"If he were different from what he is," said Lord George.

"If she is good it may be that he will become different. It is not the
thing, but the manner in which he tells it to us! Did you ever hear her
name before?"

"Never."

"What a way he has of mentioning her;--about her age," said Lady Sarah,
infinitely shocked. "Well! Mamma must be told, of course. Why shouldn't
we live at Cross Hall? I don't understand what he means about that.
Cross Hall belongs to mamma for her life, as much as Manor Cross does
to him for his."

Just outside the park gate, at the side of the park furthest away from
Brotherton, and therefore placed very much out of the world, there
stood a plain substantial house built in the days of Queen Anne, which
had now for some generations been the habitation of the dowager of the
Brotherton family. When the late marquis died, this had become for her
life the property of the Marchioness; but had bee