“I thought you would have cared more for your own brother.”

“Remember, they all said it would have been wrong.  Besides, Cecil has been always like my brother.  You will like him when you know him.”

“I can’t bear fine folks.”

“They are anything but fine!” cried Babie indignantly.

“They can’t help it.  That way of Lord Fordham’s, high-breeding I suppose you call it, just makes me wild.  I hate it!”

“Poor Ellie.  You’ll have to get over it, for Essie’s sake.”

“No, I shan’t.  It is really losing her, as much as Jessie—-”

“Jessie looks worn.”

“No wonder.  Jessie was a goose.  Mamma told her to marry that old man, and she just did it because she was told, and now he is always ordering her about, and worries and fidgets about everything in the house.  I wish one’s sisters would have more sense and not marry.”

Which sentiment poor Ellie uttered just as Sydney was entering by an unexpected open door into the next room, and she observed, “Exactly!  It is the only consolation for not having a sister that she can’t go and marry!  O Ellie, I am so sorry for you.”

This somewhat softened Ellie, and she was restored to a pitch of endurance by the time Essie was escorted into the room by both the mothers.

That polished courtesy of Fordham’s which Ellie so much disliked had quite won the heart of her mother, who, having viewed him from a distance as an obstacle in Esther’s way, now underwent a revulsion of feeling, and when he treated her with marked distinction, and her daughter with brotherly kindness, was filled with mingled gratitude, admiration and compunction.

When, after dinner, Fordham had succeeded in rousing his uncle and the other two old soldiers out of a discussion on promotion in the army, and getting them into the drawing-room, the Colonel came and sat down by his “good little sister” to confide to her, under cover of Sydney’s music, that he was very glad his pretty Essie had chosen a younger man than her elder sister’s husband.

“Very opinionated is Hood!” he said, shaking his head.  “Stuck out against Sir James and me in a perfectly preposterous way.”

Caroline was not prepossessed in favour of General Hood, either by his conversation with herself at dinner, or by the startled way in which Jessie sat upright and put on her gloves as soon as he came in; but she did not wish to discuss him with the Colonel, and asked whether John had gone to bed.

“Is he not here?  I thought he had come in with the young ones?  No? then he must have gone to bed.  Could Armine or any of them show me the way to his room?-—for I should like to know how the boy really is.”

“I doubt if Armine knows which is his room.  I had better show you, for he is not unlikely to be lying down in Fordham’s sitting-room.  Otherwise you must prepare for many stairs.  I suppose you know how gallantly he behaved,” she added, as they left the room.