Margaret’s face became unusually black when she was told that she and Mr Maguire had been courting, but she did not contradict the assertion. She did, however, express her opinion of that gentleman.

“He is a mean, false, greedy man,” she said, and then paused a moment; “and he has been the cause of my ruin.” She would not, however, explain what she meant by this, and left the house, without going back to the room in which Miss Colza was sitting.

About a week afterwards she got a letter from Mr Slow, in which that gentleman,—or rather the firm, for the letter was signed Slow and Bideawhile,—asked her whether she was in want of immediate funds. The affair between her and her cousin was not yet, they said, in a state for final settlement, but they would be justified in supplying her own immediate wants out of the estate. To this she sent a reply, saying that she had money for her immediate wants, but that she would feel very grateful if anything could be done for Mrs Mackenzie and her family. Then she got a further letter, very short, saying that a half-year’s interest on the loan had, by Mr Ball’s consent, been paid to Mrs Mackenzie by Rubb and Mackenzie.

On the day following this, when she was sitting up in her bedroom, Mrs Protheroe came to her, dressed in wonderful habiliments. She wore a dark-blue bonnet, filled all round with yellow flowers, and a spotted silk dress, of which the prevailing colour was scarlet. She was going, she said, to St Mary-le-Strand, “to be made Mrs Buggins of.” She tried to carry it off with bravado when she entered the room, but she left it with a tear in her eye, and a whimper in her throat. “To be sure, I’m an old woman,” she said before she went. “Who has said that I ain’t? Not I; nor yet Buggins. We is both of us old. But I don’t know why we is to be desolate and lonely all our days, because we ain’t young. It seems to me that the young folks is to have it all to themselves, and I’m sure I don’t know why.” Then she went, clearly resolved, that as far as she was concerned, the young people shouldn’t have it all to themselves; and as Buggins was of the same way of thinking, they were married at St Mary-le-Strand that very morning.

And this marriage would have been of no moment to us or to our little history, had not Mr Maguire chosen that morning, of all mornings in the year, to call on Miss Mackenzie in Arundel Street. He had obtained her address—of course, from Miss Colza; and, not having been idle the while in pushing his inquiries respecting Miss Mackenzie’s affairs, had now come to Arundel Street to carry on the battle as best he might. Margaret was still in her room as he came, and as the girl could not show the gentleman up there, she took him into an empty parlour, and brought the tidings up to the lodger. Mr Maguire had not sent up his name; but a personal description by the girl at once made Margaret know who was there.