"Les seuls dÉfauts vraiment terribles sont ceux qu'on prend pour des qualitÉs."—H. Rabusson.

"Wherever we go," said Aunt Harriet complacently from her sofa that evening, "weddings are sure to follow. I've noticed it again and again. Do you remember, Maria, how when we spent the summer at Nairn our landlady's son at those nice lodgings married the innkeeper's daughter? And it was very soon after our visit to River View that Mary Grey was engaged to the curate. Which reminds me that I am afraid they are very badly off, for I heard from him not long ago that he had resigned his curacy, and that as his entire trust was in the Almighty the smallest contribution would be most acceptable; but I did not send anything, because I always thought Mary ought not to have married him. And now we have been here barely fifteen months and here is Harry Manvers marrying the nurse. The Miss Blinketts tell me that she is at least fifteen years older than him. Not that that matters at all if there is spiritual affinity, but in this case—— Really, Annette, I think your wits must be woolgathering. You have put sugar in my coffee, and you know as well as possible that I only have a tiny lump not in the cup, but in the spoon."

Annette expressed her contrition, and poured out another cup.

"Did Roger Manvers say anything to you about Harry's marriage, Annette?" said Aunt Maria. "I thought possibly he had come to consult us about it, but of course he could say nothing before the Miss Blinketts. They drove him away. I shall tell Hodgkins we are not at home to them in future."

"He just mentioned the marriage, and that he had been seeing a lawyer about it."

"If every one was as laconic as you are, my love," said Aunt Harriet, with some asperity, "conversation would cease to exist; and as to saying 'Not at home' to the Miss Blinketts in future, Maria, you will of course do exactly as you please, but I must own that I think it is a mistake to cut ourselves entirely adrift from the life of the neighbourhood at a—a crisis like this. Will the marriage be recognized? Ought we to send a present? Shall we be expected to call on her? We shall have to arrive at some decision on these subjects, I presume, and how we are to do so if we close our ears to all sources of information I'm sure I don't know."

"Mayn't we have another chapter of The Silver Cross?" said Annette in the somewhat strained silence that followed. Aunt Maria was correcting her proof sheets, and was in the habit of reading them aloud in the evenings.

"Yes, do read, Maria," said Aunt Harriet, who, however trying her other characteristics might be, possessed a perennial fund of enthusiastic admiration for her sister's novels. "I could hardly sleep last night for thinking of Blanche's estrangement from Frederic, and of her folly in allowing herself to be drawn into Lord Sprofligate's supper party by that foolish Lady Bonner. Frederic would be sure to hear of it."

"I am afraid," said Aunt Maria, with conscious pride, "that the next chapter is hardly one for Annette. It deals, not without a touch of realism, with subjects which as a delineator of life I cannot ignore, but which, thank God, have no place in a young girl's existence."

"Oh, Maria, how I disagree with you!" interposed Aunt Harriet before Annette could speak. "If only I had been warned when I was a young, innocent, high-spirited creature, if only I had been aware of the pitfalls, the snares, spread like nets round the feet of the young and the attractive, I should have been spared some terrible disillusionments. I am afraid I am far too modern to wish to keep girls in the total ignorance in which our dear mother brought us up. We must march with the times. There is nothing that you, being what you are, Maria, nothing that you with your high ideals could write which, however painful, it could harm Annette to hear." (This was perhaps even truer than the enunciator was aware.) "She must some time learn that evil exists, that sin and suffering are all part of life."

Annette looked from the excited figure on the sofa to the dignified personage in the arm-chair, and her heart was wrung for them both. Oh! Poor dears! poor dears! Living in this shadowy world of their own in which reality never set foot, this tiny world of which Aunt Harriet spoke so glibly, which Aunt Maria described with such touching confidence. Was she going to shatter it for them?—she whom they were doing their best to guide into it, to make like themselves.

"I am rather tired," she said, folding up her work. "I think I will go to bed, and then you can read the chapter together, and decide whether I can hear it later on."

"It is very carefully treated, very lightly, I may say skilfully touched," said Aunt Maria urbanely, whose previous remark had been entirely conventional, and who had no intention of losing half her audience. "I think, on the whole, I will risk it. Sit down again, Annette. Let me see, how old are you?"

"Twenty-three."

"Many women at that age are wives and mothers. I agree with you, Harriet. The danger we elders fall into is the want of realization that the younger generation are grown up. We must not make this mistake with you, Annette, or treat you as a child any longer, but as—ahem!—one of ourselves. It is better that you should be made aware of the existence of the seamy side of life, so that later on, if you come in contact with it, your mind may be prepared. Chapter one hundred and twenty-five. The False Position."