“No,” said Mrs. Melcombe, laughing in a cynical spirit, “the ridiculous scrape they are in does not end with Valentine.  If he was really ill, there could be no thought of his marriage with this other girl; and, besides, Miss Graham (if this is true) will have far the best of the two brothers. St. George, as they are so fond of calling him (I suppose because Giles is such an ugly name), is far better off than Valentine, and has ten times more sense.”

“Dorothea is gone to the Isle of Wight,” continued Laura, finishing the letter, “to live with some old friends.  She has no relatives, poor girl, excepting a father, who is somewhere at the other end of the world, and he seems to take very little notice of her.  There is, indeed, an old uncle, but he lives at sea; he is almost always at sea in his yacht, and her only brother sails with him; but nobody knows in the least where they are now.  It is very sad for her, and she told St. George, and sister too, that she had only loved Val out of gratitude, because he seemed so much attached to her, and because she wanted somebody to devote herself to.”

In her next letter Liz told Laura that she herself was to be married shortly to Dick A’Court, “who says he fell in love with me when we two used to add up the coal-and-clothing cards.”  In these words, and in no more, the information was imparted, and the rest of the letter was so stiff and formal that Laura’s pleasure in the correspondence ended with it.  The realities of life were beginning to make her child-friend feel sober and reticent.

Laura wrote a long effusive letter in reply, full of tender congratulations on the high lot that awaited Liz as the helpmeet of a devoted clergyman, also on the joys of happy lovers; but this composition did not touch the feelings of Liz in the right place.  “Just as if I had not told her,” she thought, “that Emily was come home from India, and that I had consented to accept Dick partly to please her, because she was sure I should be sorry for it afterwards if I didn’t.  So I dare say I should have been,” she continued thoughtfully.  “In fact, I am almost sure of it.  But I know very well, whatever Emily may say, that Dick will make me do just as he likes.  I am sure I shall have to practise those quire boys of his, and they will bawl in my ears and call me teacher.”

So thinking, Liz allowed herself to drift towards matrimony without enthusiasm, but with a general notion that, as most people were married sooner or later, no doubt matrimony was the proper thing and the best thing on the whole.  “And I shall certainly go through with it, now I have promised,” she further reflected, “for it would never do for another of us to behave badly just at the last.”

It was the last week in March, and Laura was loitering through the garden one morning before breakfast, when Mrs. Melcombe came out to her in some excitement with a note in her hand, which had been sent on from the inn, and which set forth that Mr. Brandon, having business in that immediate neighbourhood, would, if agreeable to her, do himself the pleasure of calling some time that morning.  He added that he had brought a book for Miss Melcombe from his sister.