"Let us go and sit in the arbour," said Kate. "If Aunt Emma sees us walking together she will think we are abusing her. Oh, Maggie!" she continued, as we seated ourselves on a rustic seat in a pretty little alcove, well screened by a drapery of festooning creepers; "it was such fun with Aunt Emma. Last night, when we talked of Major Rivers' proposal you would have thought that she would have eaten him up when he presented himself; instead of which she was wonderfully polite."

"Vinegar and water, instead of pure vinegar," said the Major.

"She began by preaching a sermon, but all very politely," continued Kate.

"She spoke against men," said the Major.

"Of course she gave us plenty of her wit," said Kate. "One stroke was, that a bad thought is like a decayed tooth, that sets the whole jaw aching, though the rest of the teeth be sound."

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Which," said the Major," was meant to apply to men who marry girls for any other reason than for themselves. Their intentions may be correct, but a want of genuine love is the decayed tooth. Well, she's right."

"She ended her sermon," said Kate, "by remarking that there are men like nuts-when you crack them you find the kernel half powder."

"She recommended a metaphorical cracking of a man by a girl before she accepted him," exclaimed the Major with comical solemnity, "just to see that there was no decay within. She might have gone a step further, and recommended a physical cracking of his head. That would ensure a peaceable future."

"I am glad,” I said, "that the 'preliminaries' went off smoothly. My aunt is a stubborn woman.'

"But

'Very different from her son George," said the Major. we'll not honour her with any further discussion. She has fulfilled her guardianly duties; has given me her niece, and-what condition, think you, she has imposed on our marriage?"

"I can't guess.

"We must be married privately, she said. There must be no breakfast, no friends, no toilette."

A painful blush fired my cheeks. "It is impossible that she can be in earnest," I exclaimed.

"She is in earnest though," said the Major. "Kate must allow herself to be launched without a single streamer flying, without a singlo salvo fired. But what does it matter? We'll raise a cheer amongst ourselves. If it will not be boisterous it will be sincere."

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I am sure she would have given way, had you opposed her," said Kate, with a melancholy pout. "But I do believe you like the idea of a private marriage."

"I confess I do, little one," he answered, toying with her hands. "Look at the comfort of privacy. You are not called upon to cry, nor I to speak. Above all, you are spared a final obligation to your aunt her rude dismissal gives a conscience to the luxury of hate."

I rose, seeing the caressing gesture. What I had heard annoyed me. Had Kate requested a private marriage it would have been well; for my own part I could have wished her to be married so; but to have privacy thrust upon her; to be despatched into the world without the sympathy of a ceremony-for the breakfast, the gathering of friends, the speeches, the whole entourage of the wedding, form in reality so many sympathies to a young girl, and embody indeed one of the many superstitions to which she recurs in after life-all this filled me with humiliation and anger. My selfishness urged me into demanding for my sister some preparation for this great event of her life. I determined to see my aunt at once, and left the arbour. Kate called after me, asking me to remain; but I rejected the implied compliment and hastened away, feeling that I had stayed too long with them as it was.

CHAPTER IV.

I WALKED towards the house, and entered it impetuously; but as I opened the door my valour forsook me.

For what was I about to ask? For a marriage ceremony that would cost many pounds-not a wedding that would cost a few halfcrowns. What right had I to make such a demand? Who was my sister, that I could demand for her a better treatment than such as my aunt would probably exhibit towards a faithful servant?

Dependence, helplessness, poverty, cowed me. Still I determined to see Aunt Emma, though to approach her in a very different manner from what I had contemplated in my first movement of anger. The facility with which Major Rivers seemed to have secured her sanction suggested that he had put and left her in a good temper. Her amiability would certainly pass ere the evening came; and I thought it wisest to avail myself of a chance that might not occur again.

I therefore mounted to my room, courageous with a spirit more serviceable than my first temper had inspired. I took off my things, smoothed my hair, and went in quest of my aunt. I knew where to find her. She was in her room, of course-her bedroom-to which she regularly resorted every afternoon, to read a portly volume of Presbyterian tracts. I had properly timed myself; her reading would be over; and she would now be meditating her latest acquisition of piety. I knocked at the door.

"Come in."

I entered, and found her as I had expected. Her hands were folded over the book on her lap, and she sat, with a peculiar boltuprightness, in a small armchair near the window. I knew that the only way to prevent her from becoming immediately irritable was to attack the subject I wished to discuss at once.

"You have sanctioned Kate's marriage. I want to thank you for her," I said, with a hypocritical instinct of conciliation.

"Couldn't she thank me herself?-I think she did."

"The interests of my sister, Aunt Emma, are mine: her hopes, her happiness, her dignity, are my own."

My aunt raised her eyebrows.

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Aunt," I exclaimed, "you will not let her marry without some small preparation ?"

"What do you mean by some small preparation '?"

"There will be a little breakfast; a few friends asked; some small exhibition of kindly interest in her embarkation on the strange sea of the future."

"This comes of reading novels," said my aunt.

"It does not. You have been a girl yourself. You know the significance a woman attaches to her bridal preparations."

"What significance? Do you think men care for it? If they think it's the peel that makes the apple sweet they are bigger fools than I take them to be. If the men do not care for it, why should women make their parents or guardians spend their money on eatables and Brussels lace? Women don't make a parade for each other."

"I would wish to see Kate started in life like a lady. A good deal of a husband's respect hangs upon these first steps of a woman." "Oh, that's your creed, is it? You have profited from your reading, I must confess." Then, becoming suddenly angry, she exclaimed: "As to Kate's starting in life like a lady-who's to pay for it?"

I was silent. I knew the game was lost, now that she had touched upon the monetary aspect of the affair. I had hoped that a moment of good temper would have betrayed her into a concession.

"If you think I'm rich, you are mistaken," she went on shrilly. "I'm poor, poorer than I need be. If you want to know my income I tell you it is not enough to give my son-my own flesh and blood a start in life. Don't talk to me of your sister when I see my boy George without a prospect."

There was a dead pause. I looked towards the door.

"As for you," she said after a little, fixing her eyes, lively with irritability, on my face, "knowing what you owe to me, your pride, or a proper sense of obligation, ought certainly to have kept you dumb

in this matter. Pray confine your romantic dreams to the libraries; don't intrude them upon me, who am too poor to support them."

I held my peace. "I gave you credit for some sense. You have a mind; but you let it lie like a flat stone; whenever it is turned over I see no end of wriggling things beneath it. Let in more sunshine-real sunshine I mean. The maggots that prey upon your reason would soon die of light."

"Well, aunt," I ventured to exclaim, "all that need be said has been said. The subject shall be dead for me." And with this I left the room-peevish, wearied, disgusted.

On cool reflection, however, I began to think that Aunt Emma was right in her resolution to have the marriage a private one. Her means were undoubtedly small. Kate would want, too, her help towards a wardrobe. These things I had forgotten. I was a foolish country girl-how often do the turns in this narrative drive me into this confession!-with sensibilities heightened by my aunt's conduct; so that a fancied slight or insult made my blood curdle and my heart leap up like it would through a fright. True to my nature, I had interpreted this private marriage into another humiliation to be put upon Kate and myself. I had somehow got the notion into my head that a private marriage-private as Kate's would be-was the greatest indignity that could, with any show of reason, be imposed upon a bride. It was a novelistic theory, pure and simple; so was my idea that if ever a woman stood in need of adventitious dignity, by which I mean the glory of apparel and the splendour of ceremony, it was when she knelt at the altar. My fixed belief was that nine-tenths of men were altogether influenced by the externals of feminine life. "If," I said to myself, "a woman wants to preserve a man's good opinion of her, her first care should be to start with the means of securing his admiration." It requires more shrewdness to believe in plausible nonsense than in truth; for the simplicity of truth yields no occupation to the mind. I believed firmly in my false estimates of human character; estimates which, like charades, bring out only fragments of an idea at a time. But I have lived my reading out; and my knowledge got from the red-lettered folio of humanity sets me laughing at my girlish eagerness to procure a respectable wedding for Kate.

I had no opportunity until the evening of talking with my sister. My aunt had placed a pile of grey worsted stockings before me, and these protectors against the coming snows wanted a vast amount of darning. Industry was not to be simulated at Ivy Lodge. If I ceased my work for a few minutes Aunt Emma would look at me out of the corners of her eyes. The pupil showed but the fragment of an optic, but it was a wonderfully expressive fragment.

Meanwhile I noticed a change in her manners towards Kate. I

cannot better describe the alteration than by asking you to recall the conduct of your schoolmistress towards you after your mamma had informed her that you were leaving school for good next half. It was a struggle between the sense of a necessity for politeness, since independence is claimed, and a habit of treatment which is not to be readily dismissed. The opposing forces propelled my aunt's mind into an attitude of stiff condescension; a compromise between politeness and contempt.

As I went upstairs for the night I turned into Kate's room.

"Sit down, Maggie," she said, "and let me lock the door. I feel my own mistress now, and you cannot guess what an immense contempt the feeling gives me for Aunt Emma."

I, who was not leaving, felt boundless contempt too. Poor wretches! contempt was our only weapon. It gave as much pain to our tyrant as the arrow of a Lilliputian would give darted at the hide of a Brobdignagian rhinoceros.

I had hurriedly told Kate of my interview with Aunt Emma. "It is not wise," I now said, "to anger her by any protests. You must remember Kate, that you have to look to her for your wedding-dress and trousseau, or at least a portion of it."

"Indeed I have not," she answered. "That is what I have been waiting to tell you. Aunt informed Major Rivers, in her peevish decided way, that she was too poor to provide me with even a petticoat." "And what did Major Rivers say?"

"My dear Mrs. Gordon, I will supply Kate with every requisite. Neither she nor I could dream of intruding on your generosity after your great liberality in presenting me with her hand.'"

"I hoped she writhed beneath the sarcasm, feeble as it was. "Not she. She screwed up her face into a look as much as to say, 'I quite deserve your thanks.""

"Well!" I exclaimed, with the passive accent of helpless desperation, "matters are now at the worst. You are represented as an egregious pauper. Aunt Emma can't degrade us beyond that."

I did not want her to notice the tears that filled my eyes, so I went over to the window under the pretence of looking out.

"And when do you think I am to be married, Maggie?" "Very shortly, I hope."

"In three weeks."

"Better had it been in three days."

"I could not name an earlier time. He wanted it to be on the 1st of November; I said the 1st of December. We at length split the difference, and called it the 15th of November. I wanted time to prepare."

"To prepare what ?"

My trousseau."