“My dear Mrs. Miles Charnock, I am sure your husband will agree with me that sanitary arrangements and all connected with them are beyond the range of ladies, who are happily exempted from all knowledge of the subject.”

Anne could not say aloud that she wished Cecil had held this opinion, but she subsided, while Mr. Charnock prosed on, asking questions about the arrangements, and seeming shocked to hear that the funeral must be early the next day, this being one of the prime injunctions of the doctors, and that the one had been asked to attend it.  It made him sigh again for his poor daughter, as he handed Anne in to dinner.  She did not stay half through it, for it was again the time for feeding Frank.  Miles went half way up-stairs with her and returned, looking very wistful.  Julius smiled at him, “Your wife is too valuable, Miles; she is every one’s property.”

“It must be very gratifying to you,” added Mr. Charnock, “to find how example and superior society have developed the native qualities your discernment detected in the charming young lady who has just quitted us.  It was a most commendable arrangement to send her to enjoy the advantages of this place.”

“I sent her to be a comfort to my mother,” said Miles, bluntly.

“And so she has been,” said Julius, fervently, but sotto voce.

“I understand,” said Mr. Charnock; “and as I was saying, my dear Cecil expressed from the first her desire to assist in forming her stranger sister-in-law, and I am happy to see the excellent effect.  I should scarcely have guessed that she came from a colony.”

“Indeed,” Miles answered dryly.

Mr. Charnock might have it his own way, if he liked to think Anne had been a Hottentot till Cecil reclaimed her.

The two brothers did feel something like joy when a message at last informed Mr. Charnock that his daughter was awake and he might see her.  They drew nearer together, and leant against one another, with absolute joy in the contact.  They were singularly alike in outline, voice, and manner, in everything but colouring, and had always been one in spirit, except for the strong passion for adventure which had taken Miles to sea, to find he had chosen his profession too young to count the cost, and he held to it rather by duty than taste.  Slight as had been his seniority, poor Raymond had always been on a sort of paternal pinnacle, sharing the administration with his mother, while Miles and Julius had paired on an equality.

“Poor mother!” sighed Miles.  “How is she to live without him?  Julius, did he leave any word for me with you?”

“Above all, that Anne is the daughter for my mother, and so she is.”

“What, when this poor wife of Raymond’s was said to be the superior creature?”