“When was your uncle taken ill?”

“I don’t exactly remember.  But you will come and see him to-morrow?  And then we shall see you too.  For we are always out and in of his room just now.”

“I will come if Dr Duncan will let me.  Perhaps he will take me in his carriage.”

“No, no.  Don’t you come with him.  Uncle can’t bear doctors.  He never was ill in his life before, and he behaves to Dr Duncan just as if he had made him ill.  I wish I could send the carriage for you.  But I can’t, you know.”

“Never mind, Judy.  I shall manage somehow.—­What is the name of the gentleman who was staying with you?”

“Don’t you know?  Captain George Everard.  He would change his name to Oldcastle, you know.”

What a foolish pain, like a spear-thrust, they sent through me—­those words spoken in such a taken-for-granted way!

“He’s a relation—­on grannie’s side mostly, I believe.  But I never could understand the explanation.  What makes it harder is, that all the husbands and wives in our family, for a hundred and fifty years, have been more or less of cousins, or half-cousins, or second or third cousins.  Captain Everard has what grandmamma calls a neat little property of his own from his mother, some where in Northumberland; for he is only a third son, one of a class grannie does not in general feel very friendly to, I assure you, Mr Walton.  But his second brother is dead, and the eldest something the worse for the wear, as grannie says; so that the captain comes just within sight of the coronet of an old uncle who ought to have been dead long ago.  Just the match for auntie!”

“But you say auntie doesn’t like him.”

“Oh! but you know that doesn’t matter,” returned Judy, with bitterness.  “What will grannie care for that?  It’s nothing to anybody but auntie, and she must get used to it.  Nobody makes anything of her.”

It was only after she had gone that I thought how astounding it would have been to me to hear a girl of her age show such an acquaintance with worldliness and scheming, had I not been personally so much concerned about one of the objects of her remarks.  She certainly was a strange girl.  But strange as she was it was a satisfaction to think that the aunt had such a friend and ally in her wild niece.  Evidently she had inherited her father’s fearlessness; and if only it should turn out that she had likewise inherited her mother’s firmness, she might render the best possible service to her aunt against the oppression of her wilful mother.

“How were you able to get here to-day?” I asked, as she rose to go.

“Grannie is in London, and the wolf is with her.  Auntie wouldn’t leave uncle.”

“They have been a good deal in London of late, have they not?”

“Yes.  They say it’s about money of auntie’s.  But I don’t understand. I think it’s that grannie wants to make the captain marry her; for they sometimes see him when they go to London.”