“Whatever made you think of coming to Bursley?” Sarah questioned.

“Don’t you think it’s better than Longshaw?” said Helen.

“Yes, my darling child.  But that’s not why you came.  If you ask me, I believe it was your deliberate intention to capture your great-uncle.  Anyhow, I congratulate you on your success.”

“Ah!” Helen murmured, smiling to herself, “I’m not out of the wood yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you see, uncle and I haven’t quite decided whether he is to have his way or I am to have mine; we were both thinking about it when you happened to call.”  And then, as there was a little pause:  “Are people talking about us much?”

She did not care whether people were talking much or little, but she had an obscure desire to shift ever so slightly the direction of the conversation.

“I’ve only been here a day or two, so I can scarcely judge,” said Sarah.  “But Lilian came in from the art school this morning with an armful of chatter.”

“Let me see, I forget,” Helen said.  “Is Lilian the youngest, or the next to the youngest?”

“My dearest child, Lilian is the youngest but one, of course; but she’s grown up now—­naturally.”

“What!  When I saw her last, that day when she was with you at Knype, she had a ribbon in her hair, and she looked ten.”

“She’s eighteen.  And haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Do you mean to say you’ve been in Bursley a week and more, and haven’t heard?  Surely you know Andrew Dean?”

“I know Andrew Dean,” said Helen; and she said nothing else.

“When did you last see him?”

“Oh, about a fortnight ago.”

“It was before that.  He didn’t tell you?  Well, it’s just like him, that is; that’s Andrew all over!”

“What is?”

“He’s engaged to Lilian.  It’s the first engagement in the family, and she’s the youngest but one.”

Helen shut the trunk with a snap, then opened it and shut it again.  And then she rose, smoothing her hair.

“I scarcely know Lilian,” she said, coldly.  “And I don’t know your mother at all.  But I must call and congratulate the child.  No, Andrew Dean didn’t breathe a word.”

“I may tell you as a dreadful secret, Nell, that we aren’t any of us in the seventh heaven about it.  Aunt Annie said yesterday:  ’I don’t know that I’m so set up with it as all that, Jane’ (meaning mother).  We aren’t so set up with it as all that.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, we aren’t.  I don’t know why.  I pretend to be, lest Lilian should imagine I’m jealous.”

It was at this point that the voice of James Ollerenshaw announced a young man.