“I don’t know Junius half as well as I wish I did,” said Annie, as she finished the letter, “but I am very sure, indeed, that he will make a good husband, and I am glad he has got Roberta March—­as he wants her.”

“Did you emphasize ’he’?” asked Lawrence.

“I will emphasize it, if you would like to hear me do it,” said she.

“It’s very queer,” remarked Annie, after a little pause, “that I should have been so anxious to preserve poor Junius from your clutches, and that, after all I did to save him, I should fall into those clutches myself.”

Whereupon Lawrence, much to her delight, told her the story of the anti-detective.

Mrs Keswick sat down in her room, and read her letter.  She had no intention of abandoning her resolution to let things go as they would; and, therefore, did not expect to follow up, with further words or actions, anything she had written in her letter to Roberta March.  But she had had a very strong curiosity to know what that lady would say in answer to said letter, and she was therefore disappointed and displeased that the missive she had received was from her nephew, and not from Miss March.  She did not wish to have a letter from Junius.  She knew, or rather very much feared, that it would contain news which would be bad news to her, and although she was sure that such news would come to her sooner or later, she was very much averse to receiving it.

His letter to her merely touched upon the points of Mrs Null, and his cousin’s engagement to Mr Croft; but it was almost entirely filled with the announcement, and most earnest defence, of his own engagement to Roberta March.  He said a great deal upon this subject, and he said it well.  But it is doubtful if his fervid, and often affectionate, expressions made much impression upon his aunt.  Nothing could make the old lady like this engagement, but she had made up her mind that he might do as he pleased, and it didn’t matter what he said about it; he had done it, and there was an end of it.

But there was one thing that did matter:  That unprincipled and iniquitous old man Brandon had had his own way at last; and she and her way had been set aside.  This was the last of a series of injuries to her and her family with which she charged Mr Brandon and his family; but it was the crowning wrong.  The injury itself she did not so much deplore, as that the injurer would profit by it.  Arrested in her course of raging passion by a sudden flood of warm and irresistible emotion, she had resigned, as impetuously as she had taken them up, her purposes of vengeance, and consequently, her plans for her nephew and niece.  But she was a keen-minded, as well as passionate old woman, and when she had considered the altered state of affairs, she was able to see in it advantages as well as disappointment and defeat.  From what she had learned of Lawrence Croft’s circumstances and position, and she had made a good many inquiries on this subject of Roberta March, he