“I have not brought my niece into this affair,” replied Mr Brandon, with dignity.

“Well, then, see that you don’t,” was the widow Keswick’s reply.  And the interview terminated.

When Mr Brandon rode away on his good horse Albemarle, he looked at the post of the road gate from which he was lifting the latch by means of the long wooden handle arranged for the convenience of riders, and said to himself:  “John Keswick was a good man, but I don’t wonder he came out here and shot himself.  It is a great pity though that it wasn’t his wife who did it, instead of him.  That would have been a blessing to all of us.  But,” he added, contemplatively, as he closed the gate, “the people in this world who ought to blow out their brains, never do.”

Soon after he had gone, Mrs Null went up Pine Top Hill, and sat down on the rock to have a “think.”  “Now, then, Freddy,” she said, “everything depends on you.  If you don’t stand by me I am lost—­that is to say, I must go away from here before Junius comes; and you know I don’t want to do that.  I want to see him on my account, and on his account too; but I don’t want him crammed down my throat for a husband the moment he arrives, and that is just what will happen if you don’t do your duty, Mr Null.  Even if it wasn’t for you, I don’t want to look at him from the husband point of view, because, of course, he is a very different person from what he used to be, and is a total stranger to me.

“It is actually more than twelve years since I have seen him, and besides that, he is just as good as engaged to that niece of Mr Brandon’s, who is a horrible mixture of a she-wolf and a female mule, if I am to believe Aunt Keswick, but I expect she is, truly, a very nice girl.  Though, to be sure, she can’t have much spirit if she consented to break off her marriage just on account of the back-handed benediction which Aunt Keswick told me she offered her as a wedding gift.  If I had wanted to marry a man I would have let the old lady curse the heels off her boots before I would have paid any attention to her.  Cursing don’t hurt anybody but the curser.

“What I want of Junius is to make a friend of him, if he turns out to be the right kind of a person, and to tell him about this Mr Croft who is so anxious to find him.  The only person I have met yet who seems like an ordinary Christian is old Mr Brandon, and he’s a sly one, I’m afraid.  Aunt Keswick thinks he stopped here on his way somewhere, but I don’t believe a word of it.  I believe he came for reasons of his own, and went right straight back again.  You are almost as much to him, Freddy, as you are to me.  It would have made you laugh if you could have seen how his face lighted up when he heard we were happy together, and that I would not listen to a divorce.  And yet I am sure he has promised Aunt Keswick to see what he can do about getting one.  He wants me to stay here and make friends of Aunt Keswick and Junius, but he wouldn’t like that if it were not for you, Mr Null.  You make everything safe for him.