“You’ll find it’s all right, I don’t doubt,” said Miss Mackenzie, who, however, was beginning to have little inward tremblings of her own.

“I hope so; but I must say, I think Mr Slow has been much to blame. I do, indeed.” Mr Slow was the attorney who had for years acted for Walter Mackenzie and his father, and was now acting for Miss Mackenzie. “Will you allow me to go to him and see about it?”

“It has not been his fault. He wrote and asked me whether I would let them have it, before the papers were ready, and I said I would.”

“But may I ask about it?”

Miss Mackenzie paused before she answered:

“I think you had better not, John. Remember that Tom is my own brother, and I should not like to seem to doubt him. Indeed, I do not doubt him in the least—nor yet Mr Rubb.”

“I can assure you that it is a very bad way of doing business,” said the anxious lover.

By degrees she began to like her cousin John Ball. I do not at all wish the reader to suppose that she had fallen in love with that bald-headed, middle-aged gentleman, or that she even thought of him in the light of a possible husband; but she found herself to be comfortable in his company, and was able to make a friend of him. It is true that he talked to her more of money than anything else; but then it was her money of which he talked, and he did it with an interest that could not but flatter her. He was solicitous about her welfare, gave her bits of advice, did one or two commissions for her in town, called her Margaret, and was kind and cousinly. The Cedars, she thought, was altogether more pleasant than she had found the place before. Then she told herself that on the occasion of her former visit she had not been there long enough to learn to like the place or the people. Now she knew them, and though she still dreaded her uncle and his cross sayings, and though that driving out with her aunt in the old carriage was tedious, she would have been glad to prolong her stay there, had she not bound herself to take Susanna back to school at Littlebath on a certain day. When that day came near—and it did come very near before Mr Ball spoke out—they pressed her to prolong her stay. This was done by both Lady Ball and by her son.

“You might as well remain with us another fortnight,” said Lady Ball during one of these drives. It was the last drive which Miss Mackenzie had through Twickenham lanes during that visit to the Cedars.

“I can’t do it, aunt, because of Susanna.”

“I don’t see that at all. You’re not to make yourself a slave to Susanna.”

“But I’m to make myself a mother to her as well as I can.”