Cecil turned round from her piano, to smile and say, “I wish papa could see it.”

“I hope he will next spring; but he will hardly bring Mrs. Charnock home this winter.  I am afraid you are a good deal alone here, Cecil.  Is there no one you would like to ask?”

“The Venns,” suggested Cecil; “only we do not like them to leave home when we are away; but perhaps they would come.”

Raymond could not look as if the proposal were a very pleasing one.  “Have you no young-lady friends?” he asked.

“We never thought it expedient to have intimacies in the neighbourhood,” said Cecil.

“Well, we shall have Jenny Bowater here in a week or two.”

“I thought she was your mother’s friend.”

“So she is.  She is quite young enough to be yours.”

“I do not see anything remarkable about her.”

“No, I suppose there is not; but she is a very sensible superior person.”

“Indeed!  In that commonplace family.”

“Poor Jenny has had an episode that removes her from the commonplace.  Did you ever hear of poor Archie Douglas?”

“Was not he a good-for-nothing relation of your mother?”

“Not that exactly.  He was the son of a good-for-nothing, I grant, whom a favourite cousin had unfortunately married, but he was an excellent fellow himself; and when his father died, she had Mrs. Douglas to live in that cottage by the Rectory, and sent the boy to school with us; then she got him into Proudfoot’s office—­the solicitor at Backsworth, agent for everybody’s estates hereabouts.  Well, there arose an attachment between him and Jenny; the Bowaters did not much like it, of course; but they are kind-hearted and good-natured, and gave consent, provided Archie got on in his profession.  It was just at the time when poor Tom Vivian was exercising a great deal more influence than was good among the young men in the neighbourhood; and George Proudfoot was rather a joke for imitating him in every respect—­from the colour of his dog-cart to the curl of his dog’s tail.  I remember his laying a wager, and winning it too, that if he rode a donkey with his face to the tail, Proudfoot would do the same; but then, Vivian did everything with a grace and originality.”

“Like his sister.”

“And doubly dangerous.  Every one liked him, and we were all more together than was prudent.  At last, two thousand pounds of my mother’s money, which was passing through the Proudfoots’ hands, disappeared; and at the same time poor Archie fled.  No one who knew him could have any reasonable doubt that he did but bear the blame of some one else’s guilt, most likely that of George Proudfoot; but he died a year or two back without a word, and no proof has ever been found; and alas! the week after Archie sailed, we saw his name in the list of sufferers in a vessel that was burnt.  His mother happily had died before all this, but there were plenty to grieve bitterly for him; and poor Jenny has been the more like one of ourselves in consequence.  He had left a note for Jenny, and she always trusted him; and we all of us believe that he was innocent.”