The Three Brides

added hastily, 'Who could those children be? They did not look quite like poor children.'

'Ah! she is always taking up with some odd person in her own away,' said Cecil. 'But here we are. Will you drive on to the hotel, or get out here?'

When, at the end of two hours, the sisters-in-law met at the work-room, and Rosamond had taken a survey of the row of needle-women, coming up one by one to give their work, be paid and dismissed, there was a look of weariness and vexation on Cecil's face. She had found it less easy to keep order and hinder gossip, and had hardly known how to answer when that kind lady, Mrs. Miles Charnock, had been asked after; but she would have scorned to allow that she had missed her assistant, and only politely asked how Rosamond had sped.

'Oh! excellently. People were so well advised as to be out, so I paid off all my calls.'

'You did not return your calls without Julius?'

'There's nothing he hates so much. I would not have dragged him with me on any account.'

'I think it is due to one's self.'

'Ah! but then I don't care what is due to myself. I saw a friend of yours, Cecil.'

'Who?'

'Mrs. Duncombe,' said Rosamond. 'I went to Pettitt's-the little perfumer, you know, that Julius did so much for at the fire; and there she was, leaning on the counter, haranguing him confidentially upon setting an example with sanatory measures.'

'Sanitary,' corrected Cecil; 'sanitas is health, sano to cure. People never know the difference.'

'Certainly I don't,' said Rosamond. 'It must be microscopic!'

'Only it shows the difference between culture and the reverse,' said Cecil.

'Well, you know, I'm the reverse,' said Rosamond, leaning sleepily back, and becoming silent; but Cecil was too anxious for intelligence to let her rest, and asked on what Mrs. Duncombe was saying.

'I am not quite sure-she was stirring up his public spirit, I think, about the drainage; and they were both of them deploring the slackness and insensibility of the corporation, and canvassing for Mr. Whitlock, as I believe. It struck me as a funny subject for a lady, but I believe she does not stick at trifles.'

'No real work can be carried out by those who do,' said Cecil.

'Oh!' added Rosamond, 'I met Mrs. and Miss Bowater, and they desired me to say that Jenny can't come till the dinner-party on the 20th, and then they will leave her.'

'How cool to send a message instead of writing!'

'Oh! she has always been like one of themselves, like a sister to them all.'

'I can't bear that sort of people.'

'What sort?'

'Who worm themselves in.'

'Miss Bowater could have no occasion for worming. They must be quite on equal terms.'

'At any rate, she was only engaged to their poor relation.'

'What poor relation? Tell me! Who told you?'

'Raymond. It was a young attorney-a kind of cousin of the Poynsett side, named Douglas.'

'What? There's a cross in the churchyard to Elizabeth Douglas, daughter of Francis Poynsett, and wife of James Douglas, and at the bottom another inscription to Archibald Douglas, her son, lost in the Hippolyta.'

'Yes, that must be the man. He was flying from England, having been suspected of some embezzlement.'

'Indeed! And was Jenny engaged to him? Julius told me that Mrs. Douglas had been his mother's dearest friend, and that this Archie had been brought up with them, but he did not say any more.'

'Perhaps he did not like having had a cousin in an attorney's office. I am sure I had no notion of such a thing.'

Rosamond laughed till she was exhausted at the notion of Julius's sharing the fastidious objections she heard in Cecil's voice; and then, struck by the sadness of the story, she cried, 'And that makes them all so fond of Miss Bowater. Poor girl, what must she not have gone through! And yet how cheerful she does look!'

'People say,' proceeded Cecil, unable to resist the impulse to acquire a partaker in her half-jealous aversion, 'that it was a great disappointment that Mrs. Poynsett could not make her sons like her as much as she did herself.'

'Oh!' cried Rosamond, 'how little peace we should have if we always heeded what people say!'

'People that know,' persisted Cecil.

'Not very wise or very kind people to say so,' quoth Rosamond; 'though, by the bye, the intended sting is happily lost, considering that it lies among five.'

'Why should you assume a sting?'

'Because I see you are stung, and want to sting me,' said Rosamond, in so merry a tone that the earnestness was disguised.

'I! I'm not stung! What Mrs. Poynsett or Miss Bowater may have schemed is nothing to me,' said Cecil, with all her childish dignity.

'People talk of Irish imagination,' said Rosamond in her lazy meditative tone.

'Well?' demanded Cecil, sharply.

'Only it is not my Irish imagination that has devised this dreadful picture of the artful Jenny and Mrs. Poynsett spinning their toils to entrap the whole five brothers. Come, Cecil, take my advice and put it out of your head. Suppose it were true, small blame to Mrs. Poynsett.'

'What do you mean?' said Cecil, in a voice of hurt dignity.

'I may mean myself.' And Rosamond's peal of merry laughter was most amazing and inexplicable to her companion, who was not sure that she was not presuming to laugh at her.

There was a silence, broken at last by Rosamond. 'Cecil, I have been tumbled about the world a good deal more than you have, and I never found that one got any good by disregarding the warnings of the natives. There's an immense deal in the cat and the cock.'

'I do not understand, said Cecil.

Whereupon Rosamond, in a voice as if she were telling the story to a small child, began: 'Once upon a time there was a wee bit mousiekie, that lived in Giberatie O-that trotted out of her hole upon an exploring expedition. By and by she came scuttling back in a state of great trepidation-in fact, horribly nervous. 'Mother, mother!' said the little mouse, 'I've seen a hideous monster, with a red face, and a voice like a trumpet, and a pair of spurs.''

'Of course, I know that,' broke in Cecil.

'Ah, you haven't heard all. 'I should have died of terror,' said the little mouse, 'only that I saw a dear sweet graceful creature, with a lovely soft voice, and a smooth coat, and the most beautiful eyes, and the most exquisite pathetic expression in her smile; and she held out her velvet paw to me, and said, 'Dear little mousiekie- pousie, you're the loveliest creature I ever met, quite unappreciated in these parts. That horrid old cock is terribly vulgar and commonplace; and never you believe your mother if she tells you he is better worth cultivating than one who has such a deep genuine love and appreciation of all the excellences of all mice, and of you in particular with your dun fur.''

Rosamond could not for her very life help putting in that word dun; and Cecil, who had been driving straight on with her eyes fixed on her pony's ears, and rather a sullen expression of forced endurance, faced about. 'What you mean by all this I don't know; but if you think it applies to me or my friends, you are much mistaken.'

'I told you,' said Rosamond, with the same languor, looking out under her half-shut eyes, 'that I apply things to myself. I've met both sorts in my time.'

And silence reigned for the rest of the way. Cecil had read many more books, knew much more, and was altogether a far more cultivated personage than the Lady Rosamond; but she was not half so ready in catching the import of spoken words; and all this time she was by no means certain whether all this meant warning or meant mockery, though either was equally impertinent, and must be met with the same lady-like indifference, which Cecil trusted that she had never transgressed.

Neither of them, nor indeed any other living creature, knew of a little episode which had occurred about eighteen months previously, when Joanna Bowater had been taking care of Mrs Poynsett during Raymond's first absence from home after her accident. Of course he took her back to Strawyers as soon as he arrived; and about half- way, after a prolonged and unusual silence, he said, 'Jenny, I believe we know one another's histories pretty well. It would be a great happiness and blessing if you could bring yourself to sink the past so far as to take me,