Time was to answer this question for her, and a very momentous month for the whole family began its course.  Laura, writing from Paris to Liz, made it evident to those who knew anything of the matter, that Mrs. Melcombe, as she thought, had carried her out of harm’s way; and it is a good thing Laura did not know with what perfect composure and ambitious hope Joseph made his preparations for the voyage.  The sudden change of circumstances and occupation, and the new language he had to learn, woke him thoroughly from his dream, and though it had been for some long time both deep and strong, yet it was to him now as other dreams “when one awaketh;” and Laura herself, now that she had been brought face to face, not with her lover, but with facts, was much more reasonable than before.  Brandon had said to her pointedly, in the presence of her sister-in-law, “If you and this young man had decided to marry, no law, human or divine, could have forbidden it.”  But at the same time Amelia had said, “Laura, you know very well that though you love to make romances about him, you would not give up one of the comforts of life for his sake.”

Laura, in fact, had scarcely believed in the young man’s love till she had been informed that it was over.  She longed to be sought more than she cared to be won; it soothed and comforted what had been a painful sense of disadvantage to know that one man at least had sighed for her in vain.  He would not have been a desirable husband, but as a former lover she could feign him what she pleased, and while, under new and advantageous circumstances, he became more and more like what she feigned, it was not surprising that in the end she forgot her feigning, and found her feet entangled for good and all in the toils she herself had spread for them.

In the meantime Johnnie and Crayshaw, together with the younger Mortimers, did much as they liked, till Harrow school reopened, when the two boys returned, departing a few hours earlier than was necessary that they might avoid Miss Crampton, a functionary whom Johnny held in great abhorrence.

At the same period Grand suddenly rallied, and, becoming as well as ever, his son, who had made many journeys backwards and forwards to see him, brought him home, buying at the railway station, as he stepped into his father’s carriage, the Times and the Wigfield Advertiser, and True Blue, in each of which he saw a piece of news that concerned himself, though it was told with a difference.

In the Times was the marriage of Giles Brandon, Esq., &c., to Dorothea, elder daughter of Edward Graham, Esq.; and in the local paper, with an introduction in the true fustian style of mock concealment, came the same announcement, followed by a sufficiently droll and malicious account of the terrible inconvenience another member of this family had suffered a short time since by being snowed up, in which state he still continued, as snow in that part of the world had forgotten how to melt.