Then Mr Maguire got up, saying that he should probably do himself the pleasure of calling on Miss Mackenzie at the Cedars, and went his way.

“I wonder what he’s after,” said Mrs Mackenzie, as soon as the door was shut.

“Perhaps he came to tell her to bear it all with Christian resignation,” said Miss Colza; “they always do come when anything’s in the wind like that; they like to know everything before anybody else.”

“It’s my belief he’s after her money,” said Mrs Mackenzie.

“With such a squint as that!” said Mary Jane; “I wouldn’t have him though he was made of money, and I hadn’t a farthing.”

“Beauty is but skin deep,” said Miss Colza.

“And it’s manners to wait till you are asked,” said Mrs Mackenzie.

Mary Jane chucked up her head with disdain, thereby indicating that though she had not been asked, and though beauty is but skin deep, still she held the same opinion.

Mr Maguire, as he went away to a clerical advertising office in the neighbourhood of Exeter Hall, thought over the matter profoundly. It was clear enough to him that the Mackenzies of Gower Street were not interfering with him; very probably they might have hoped and attempted to keep the heiress among them; that assertion that there was no room for her in the house—as though they were and ever had been averse to having her with them—seemed to imply that such was the case. It was the natural language of a disappointed woman. But if so, that hope was now over with them. And then the young lady had plainly exposed the suspicions which they all entertained as to the Balls. These grand people at the Cedars, this baronet’s family at Twickenham, must have got her to come among them with the intention of keeping her there. It did not occur to him that the baronet or the baronet’s son would actually want Miss Mackenzie’s money. He presumed baronets to be rich people; but still they might very probably be as dogs in the manger, and desirous of preventing their relative from doing with her money that active service to humanity in general which would be done were she to marry a deserving clergyman who had nothing of his own.

He made his visit to the advertising office, and learned that clergymen without cures were at present drugs in the market. He couldn’t understand how this should be the case, seeing that the newspapers were constantly declaring that the supply of university clergymen were becoming less and less every day. He had come from Trinity, Dublin and after the success of his career at Littlebath, was astonished that he should not be snapped at by the retailers of curacies.

On the next day he visited Twickenham. Now, on the morning of that very day Margaret Mackenzie first woke to the consciousness that she was the promised wife of her cousin John Ball. There was great comfort in the thought.