"What will they say? What will they do?" thinks Addie, with shuddering presentiment as she is being driven along the high-road to Nutsford. "And how can I tell them about it? Oh, the worst part of all is before me now! How can I tell them about it—how can I tell them? If I only knew how they'd take it—could only guess! But I can't—I can't! Aunt Jo will be pleased, I think. She will say it's an intervention of Providence, the turning of the tide, perhaps; but Aunt Jo is old, and can't feel like the young—and then of course she's not a Lefroy. That's the great point—she's not a Lefroy. Perhaps Bob will never speak to me again for letting him say so much to me as he did; perhaps Pauline will disown me too, if she hears Bob is so proud, so resentful, so tetchy about the family prestige! It may be an awful blow to him, poor darling—and he going away, too, full of sorrow and trouble already! Wouldn't it be better if I said nothing at all about it until he had left? But then—then—I've got only until to-morrow, and I've promised an answer. Oh, dear! oh, dear! what am I to do? Why did I go clambering up into that wretched tree, like the shameful tomboy that I am? Why didn't I study quietly at home as the aunt suggested—why, why? Good gracious, the farm already! How that horse flies! Perhaps they'll guess, they'll suspect something, when they see me in his brougham? And Hal is so vulgar, so exasperating when he begins to chaff, and Lottie asks such dreadful, dreadful questions!"

She peers forth anxiously before venturing to descend, and, to her great relief, sees that so far the coast is clear. Neither of the boys is about. Hal is not at his usual noonday pastime of shying stones at the pump, or worrying the donkey in the stubble-field. Bob is not, as is his wont, leaning against the hay-rick, smoking away in sullen gloom his last hours on shore. She hobbles up the little garden path and pushes open the farm-house door.

A dismal wailing sound issues from the stuffy, low-roofed parlor to the right, sacred to the family gentility.

"Oh, dear, dear, the aunt is at it again—worse than ever!" thinks Addie ruefully. "She's an awful spendthrift in tears, poor soul! At the rate she has been weeping for the last three months, she really must cry herself dry soon!"

At that moment the door opens, and the old lady half stumbles out, looking so utterly limp and woe-begone that her niece's heart sinks with the fear of some fresh disaster.

"Oh, what is it, aunt? Has—has anything else happened? The boys?"

"My dear, my dear, we'd best give it up—throw up our hands and have done with the struggle at once; it's of no use, of no use! I can hold out no longer."

"Oh, what has happened? Tell me—tell me!"

"Pauline is home again. She came back half an hour ago."

"Pauline back!" echoes Addie, aghast. "Wouldn't they—wouldn't they keep her?"

"She ran away from them."

After a moment's pause, Addie enters, and sees the young culprit, with crimson cheeks and streaming eyes, standing in the center of the room, the boys glaring at her in furious bitterness.

"Pauline!"

"Yes, that's my name; and here I am," the young lady answers, in a shrill taunting voice. "What have you to say to me, Adelaide? I've just been receiving the greetings of my brothers and aunt, and am ready to receive yours now. Open fire, my dear; I'm prepared for any charge. Don't be afraid."

But Addie says nothing—simply sinks into a chair, feeling that the waters are closing round her on every side.

"Oh, Addie, Addie!" exclaims Pauline, disarmed by her mute dejection, "don't be too hard on me, for I couldn't help it—oh, I couldn't help it! You don't know, you can't conceive what a life I've led since I left you—it was unbearable!"

"You've had good food to eat, a soft bed to lie on, warm walls to shelter you, servants to wait on you," says Robert, with a fierce sneer, "which is more than the rest of us have in prospect—more than I shall enjoy for many a long day, Heaven knows!"

"More than I shall have in the charity-school they're trying to get me into," adds Hal, moodily.

"More than your sister will have as a nursery governess in a grocer's family," says Aunt Jo, with dreary emphasis.

"No, no, it isn't—it isn't!" bursts in Pauline passionately. "I'd rather be cabin-boy on board a coal-barge, I'd rather starve at a charity-school, I'd rather teach all the young grocers in England, I'd rather be—be maid-of-all-work in a—a lunatic asylum than go on living with Aunt Selina. Oh, you don't know what it was—what I had to put up with! The very first evening I arrived she began nag, nag, nagging at me, and she has kept it up ever since; her voice is dinning in my ears even now; it haunted me every night in my sleep. Nothing I did, nothing I said, was right. I was clumsy, awkward, uncouth, boisterous, stupid. I could not enter a room, move a chair, or lift a book without making her shiver and the admiral swear. I knew nothing, I could do nothing, not even read the 'Naval Intelligence' without stumbling at every second word. Five times running," continues the girl, with quivering lip, "she has made me walk across the room, shut and open the door, her own maid watching me, until—until I felt inclined to slam it with a force to bring her warm walls about her wretched head. You don't know what it was!"

Nobody makes reply. She looks round at the sullen averted faces, and then bursts out again—

"I wish I hadn't come back to you—you hard-hearted, unfeeling, cruel—I wish—I wish I had thrown myself into the lake at the back of the park, as I ran out one night to do in my anger and pain. But I didn't, because—because I thought of you all and how sorry you'd be. I wish I had now; it would have been better."

Robert shrugs his shoulders and flings a half-consumed cigarette into the grate.

"Better!" he repeats, with a callous laugh. "I won't gainsay you, Polly. I think it would be better still if we made a family-party of the dive—just plunge in in silence together, we five Lefroys. It could be done poetically enough even in the old mill-pond behind the grove. You girls could twine lilies in your hair, Ophelia-wise, and afterward we would haunt the old place, five cold slimy ghosts, and drive the vitriol-man back to the smoke whence he sprung."

"Bob, Bob, don't say such dreadful things! You frighten the life out of me!" screams Lottie, clinging to her aunt.

"Bob, you're a—a wretch, and I wish I was dead!" cries Pauline, flinging herself across the table in a storm of sobs.

Then Addie rises and speaks for the first time, her arm around her sister's heaving shoulders.

"Don't fret, Polly, don't fret. Never mind them; you'll live at Nutsgrove with me. I'll give you a home, dear."

"Addie!"

"I'm quite serious, Pauline—I mean what I say."

Adelaide's voice is very steady and grave, and there is a tone in it that arrests the stormy attention of the family.

"Mr. Armstrong asked me this afternoon to marry him."

"Eh? What did you say?"

"Kindly repeat that statement, Addie, will you?"

She looks into her brother's startled face, and complies with mechanical firmness, as if she were saying a lesson.

"Mr. Armstrong of Kelvick asked me this afternoon to marry him. I fell from a tree and hurt my foot in the grove, and he found me there, and drove me on to the house, where he asked me to marry him. He said that, if I would, he'd settle Nutsgrove on me altogether, that I might have the girls to live with me always, and that he'd help on you boys as well as he could in the world."

"And what did you say?" comes in trembling eager chorus.

"I said nothing particular—neither 'Yes' nor 'No.' I said I wanted time to consider and consult with you all."

"Thank Heaven, thank Heaven!" Miss Darcy's quivering voice breaks the silence as she half staggers with arms outstretched toward her niece. "And I had begun to doubt—to question Providence! I am rebuked now—I am rebuked now. Addie, my dearest, you have made me a happy old woman to-night!"

"I knew you would be pleased—would wish me to—to accept him," says Addie softly, a little impressed by her heartfelt emotion; "it was the others I felt doubtful about—whose opinion I wanted."

She looks round at the flushed faces of her brothers and sisters; but, of the four, three, though evidently eager to give their opinions, are afraid to open their mouths until "Robert the Magnificent," the recognized head of the family, arbiter of its ethics and manners, has first given tongue.

He walks round slowly from the fireplace, lays his hand heavily upon his sister's shoulder, and then says, in a tone crisp, terse, Napoleonic—

"Marry him! Shut your eyes, my girl, and swallow him as if he were a pill."

"Oh, Robert, I—I couldn't do that! One could swallow anything but a husband. A husband is always there; he can't be swallowed."

"Yes, he can. You don't understand those things, child. After the first gulp, you won't notice him; one husband is much the same as another, after a bit. It's his surroundings, not his personality, that will affect your life and your happiness; and they are good—the best of their kind."

"Oh, Bob, Bob, I never thought you would take it like this!" breaks in Addie, half crying.

"Addie, child, my first thought is your welfare; all selfish emotions, all inward stings must subside before that consideration. You'll not get another chance like this; and we Lefroys must e'en bow our haughty heads and swim with the tide. We're not prepared to pull against it; we should only sink in the struggle. Marry him, Addie, my dear. It will be as I have said, a bit of a wrench at first, but you'll soon get over it, and you will always have your family to fall back upon. We shall be always there, never you fear, to stand by you—to brush him up for you, to—"

"Oh, yes, yes," bursts in an eager impassioned chorus, "we'll stand by you, Addie, darling!"

"We'll brush him up for you!"

"We'll tone him down; you'll see—you'll see!"

"Marry him—marry him, dear! Never mind his vulgarity."

"Never mind the vitriol or the chemical ma—"

"Or the grocer's van, or anything. You'll have us and the old place back again. What does anything else signify? Marry him, marry him, Addie!"

Poor Addie, overwhelmed by the vigor and unanimity of the verdict against her, so different from what she has expected, turns from one to another, and then whimpers pathetically—

"It's all very fine you talking like that; but—but, if you were in my place, how would you feel? I don't believe you'd marry him, Pauline, not for all—"

"Wouldn't I, just?" breaks in Pauline stoutly. "Why, I'd marry him if he were three times as old and as plain and as common as he is! Marry him? Why I'd marry an Irish invincible, I'd marry the hangman himself, in the circumstances! His age is another score in your favor, Addie; he's a man pretty well on in life, I should say."

"Only thirty-seven," she puts in moodily.

"Well, thirty-seven is a good age—nearly double your own, child; and a man like him, who has had such a hard life of it, who has been scraping up sixpences since he was four years old, is sure to break up early—he can't stand the strain much after his prime. The chances are ten to one you'll be a free woman before you're thirty. Think of that, my dear!"

"Oh, yes, think of that, Addie! Think of yourself as a lovely—well, not exactly lovely, but extremely nice young widow, with lots of money, living at Nutsgrove, and we all around you, happy as the day is long! Oh, wouldn't it be too awfully lovely!"

Addie shakes her head, wipes her eyes slowly, and tries to smile. Pauline kisses her wet cheek coaxingly, Robert pats her plump shoulder. There is a moment's soothing silence, broken by Lottie, who has also crept up to her side, asking in an eager whisper—

"Addie, tell us what he said—what he did. Is he awfully in love, like Guy was in the 'Heir of Redcliffe,' you know? Did he try to—"

"Lottie, Lottie," Addie answers angrily, with flaming cheeks, "what silly, what absurd questions you do ask! I never met a child like you."

"I don't see how I am so idiotic," she rejoins aggrievedly. "Why should Mr. Armstrong want to marry you unless he were in love with you, I'd like to know?"

"Why?" repeats Robert loftily. "I think the reason ought to be patent even to your immature comprehension, Lottie."

Addie looks at him with an expression of sudden interest.

"Bob, do you know I'm afraid I'm quite as dull as Lottie—for—for—I don't see his reason for wishing to marry me. What is it?"

"He is marrying you for your position, of course. What other reason could he have?"

"My position? Oh!"

"Yes, your position. He has money, he has lands, he wishes to found a family and sink the manufacturer in the squire; therefore, like all of his class, he looks about him for a wife who will bring breeding, ancestry, position as a dowry, the only means by which he can creep into county society. His eye naturally falls on you, the eldest daughter of the House of Lefroy; he seeks to reinstate you as mistress of your forefathers' acres. And what follows this move? Why, without an effort on his part, without one introductory cringe, the gates of county society are swung open to him through you, and his end effected. By Jove, now that I come to think of it, it's a jolly smart move on his part! I didn't give him credit for such clear-sightedness; he's a sharp fellow, and no mistake. Good thing for you, Addie—you'll have me at hand to look after your settlements. I'll keep a sharp eye on him!"

"So that is his reason, his motive!" thinks Addie, with contemptuous bitterness. "Of course it is a much more likely solution than—than that airy nonsense about the cup of tea. I wonder how a man, a big middle-aged man like him can be so full of littleness, of meanness, and—and—hypocrisy!"

"Yes," resumes Bob, with cynical fluency, "that is his little game; and his next move will be to gently push the family cognomen from behind the scenes and bring our identity to the fore. He'll begin after a year or two by tacking 'Lefroy' on to 'Armstrong;' you'll be 'Mrs. Lefroy Armstrong of Nutsgrove,' my dear; then a hyphen will be smuggled in; after that you'll become 'Mrs. Armstrong-Lefroy of Nutsgrove;' and, by Jove, before your son and heir reaches maturity probably, he'll be as clean a Lefroy, at least in name, as would have been his poor disinherited uncle but for the irony of fate. You must call him 'Robert,' after me, Addie."

But this generous speech has not the soothing effect intended, for Addie, with red, angry face, starts to her feet and shakes off her clinging family passionately.

"How do you know I shall ever marry him at all? I never said I would; and I'm sure I won't now—I'm sure I won't. I might have done so before—before, when I didn't understand; but, now that you have shown me what he is, I won't be the staff to prop his mean snobbishness. Let him get pedigree and breeding somewhere else; he shall not buy them from me, big as his price is!"

Dismay appalls the family at this unexpected turn of affairs; the unfortunate orator and elucidator stands staring with open mouth, not able to produce a protesting sound. Aunt Jo it is who briskly and successfully comes to the rescue. She has taken no part in the discussion, but has sat at the window apart in a soothing daydream, her heart singing a canticle of joy that the days of her bondage are at last closing in—sat, living through in happy prospective the coming year, established once more in her neat, comfortable little house, where the day worked itself out from sunrise to sunset with the soothing regularity of clock-work, where the voice of insulting tradesmen never penetrated, where all was peace, neatness, comfortable economy, and respectability.

"Robert, Pauline, Henry," she cries sharply, roused by Addie's disastrous wrath, "what are you tormenting the poor child about, talking of things you do not in the least understand? Don't you see that she is perfectly worn out with exhaustion and excitement and the pain of her foot. Come to bed, child, come to bed; you're not in a state to be up. I'll make you a nice hot drink that will send you to sleep at once. Here's your stick. What a grand one it is! Where did you get it? From Mr. Armstrong? Well, it's like himself, strong, reliable, and stout-limbed."