“No, dear.  I have been at Bournemouth three weeks, I came merely for change.  Only last week I heard of your being here, and should have called, but have been so much occupied, and I felt sure of meeting you somewhere, and thought the surprise might be the more agreeable.  We’ve had a most delightful picnic with the Mount Stewart folks.  But what was all this fainting about?  One would think Mr. Brookshank had been proposing to you.”

“He certainly made me a proposal mother, but I was quite unprepared for it, and was overcome.”

“What an imaginative and sensitive-minded girl you must be, Matilda!  You make me feel quite young.  When will you be old enough to attend to business?  You will accept him, of course?  Well, do as you please; you may reckon on my consent, you know.  But I must get back to my party, and perhaps you had better rejoin yours.  Ta-ta.”

Jilted for her daughter!  It wasn’t pleasant.  When Mrs. Wimbush got home, she blew up Carry for being so sly.

“Well, mamma,” said Carry, “of course I thought you knew all about it.  I never made any secret of the affair.  I knew very well that you had rejected Mr. Tom, but I could not possibly suppose that was any reason why I should refuse Charles.  Of course he is older than I am, but he is only five-and-thirty, and has a good position; and I am sure we shall always give you a welcome; Charles said so.”

“Well,” thought Mrs. Wimbush, “he has money, and it will be all in the family; that’s at least a comfort.”

The effect of the little episode of the last chapter was that the brothers were made friends, and Tom recovered his spirits, and could laugh heartily at what he had before supposed was his brother’s rivalry.

Mrs. Wimbush repented her that she had rejected Mr. Tom.  Her repentance produced a salutary desire on her part to make atonement for the past.  She would have him yet.  When a widow says so much as that about a man, let him ’ware hawk.

A month went by, and behold Mrs Wimbush and Mr. Tom Brookshank seated tete-a-tete at an evening party, where the music which was going on was sufficiently loud to render private conversation inaudible save to those to whom it was addressed.

“I fear,” said the widow, affecting an absent manner, “I treated you very unkindly, Mr. Tom.  You took me so entirely by surprise, that, really, I—­hardly know what I said.  I have been very unhappy about it—­very.”

“Forgotten and forgiven,” whispered Mr. Tom.

“How generous of you! you make me so glad! because now that your brother Charles is going to marry my daughter, we shall be in some sort related, and I could not bear you to think unkindly of me.”

“No,” said Mr. Tom, fidgeting a little, “I shall never do that.”

“How droll!” said the widow.  “Let me see, what will the relationship be?  You will be my son-in-law’s brother, and consequently I shall be your mother-in-law once removed.  You will have a mother younger than yourself, Mr. Tom.  I hope you will not presume upon her youth to be a bad boy.”