Carry began to cry.

“You silly thing, what is the matter with you?” Gertrude White exclaimed; but of course her arm was round her sister’s neck.

“It is true, then.”

“What is true?”

“What people say.”

“What do people say?”

“That you will marry Sir Keith Macleod.”

“Carry!” she said, angrily, “I can’t imagine who has been repeating such idiotic stories to you, I wish people would mind their own business.  Sir Keith Macleod marry me!”

“Do you mean to say he has never asked you?” Carry said, disengaging herself, and fixing her eyes on her sister’s face.

“Certainly not!” was the decided answer; but all the same, Miss Gertrude White’s forehead and cheeks flushed slightly.

“Then you know that he means to; and that is why you have been writing to me, day after day, about the romance of the Highlands, and fairy stories, and the pleasure of people who could live without caring for the public.  Oh, Gerty, why won’t you be frank with me, and let me know the worst at once?”

“If I gave you a box on the ears,” she said, laughing, “that would be the worst at once; and I think it would serve you right for listening to such tittle-tattle and letting your head be filled with nonsense.  Haven’t you sufficient sense to know that you ought not to compel me to speak of such a thing—­absurd as it is?  I cannot go on denying that I am about to become the wife of Tom, Dick, or Harry; and you know the stories that have been going about for years past.  Who was I last?  The wife of a Russian nobleman who gambled away all my earnings at Homburg.  You are fourteen now, Carry; you should have more sense.”

Miss Carry dried her eyes; but she mournfully shook her head.  There were the otter-skins lying on the table.  She had seen plenty of the absurd paragraphs about her sister which good-natured friends had cut out of provincial and foreign papers and forwarded to the small family at South Bank.  But the mythical Russian nobleman had never sent a parcel of otter-skins.  These were palpable and not to be explained away.  She sorrowfully left the room, unconvinced.

And now Miss Gertrude White set to work with a will; and no one who was only familiar with her outside her own house would have recognized in this shifty, practical, industrious person, who went so thoroughly into all the details of the small establishment, the lady who, when she went abroad among the gayeties of the London season, was so eagerly sought after, and flattered, and petted, and made the object of all manner of delicate attentions.  Her father, who suspected that her increased devotion to these domestic duties was but part of that rebellious spirit she had recently betrayed, had nevertheless to confess that there was no one but herself whom he could trust to arrange his china and dust his curiosities.  And how could he resent her giving instructions to the cook, when it was his own dinner that profited thereby?