"Take that one to Miss Clotilde," said Miss Philippa, beaming on the eldest of the young ladies, as she indicated the gayest of the carefully built up bunches of flowers. "Yes; and now that one to Miss Marie." The bouquets were handed to the young ladies in turn. "Now remove the soup-tureen," said Miss Philippa. "Oh, aunt!" exclaimed Clotilde, as Joseph left the room. "What lovely flowers!" cried Marie, holding them to her face. "Yes, yes; yes, yes!" cried Miss Philippa in a highly pitched and very much cracked but playful voice. "I don't know what to say to it, I'm sure; do you, sister?" "No, indeed--indeed," cried Miss Isabella, in an imitation playful tone. "It seems to me that our quiet little innocent home is being laid siege to by gentlemen," prattled Miss Philippa. "And--and I don't know what's coming to us," said Miss Isabella gaily; and her hands shook, and her head nodded as she laughed, a sad ghost of a youthful hearty sign of mirth. "But is this for me, aunt?" cried Clotilde, flushing up, and looking handsome in the extreme. "And this for me, aunt?" cried Marie, whose cheeks could not brook the rivalry displayed by those of her sister. "Oh, I don't know, my dears, I'm sure; but it's very, very, very, very shocking, and you are both very, very, very, very naughty girls to look so handsome, and go to dinner-parties, and captivate gentlemen." "And make them lay offerings before your shrines," prattled Miss Isabella. "Floral offerings before your shrines," repeated Miss Philippa, who nodded her approval of her sister's poetical comparison. "But, aunt, who sent them?" "Oh, it's no use to ask me, my dear," exclaimed Miss Philippa. "There may be a wicked little note inside. I don't know. I don't understand such things. They are beyond me." "Oh yes, quite beyond us, my dear," said Miss Isabella; and she laid her hand upon her side as she felt a curious little palpitation, and there was a pathetic sadness in her withered face, as she began thinking of Captain Glen. "But somebody must have sent them, aunties," said Marie, who dropped into the diminutive, and slightly endearing, appellative quite naturally, now that she found herself being exalted by her relatives. "Oh yes, my dears, of course--of course," said Miss Philippa: "someone must have sent them. Mind," she cried, shaking one finger, "I don't say that those beautiful, those lovely exotics were sent to you by Lord Henry Moorpark. And I don't say--no: you don't say, sister--" "Yes, of course," cried Miss Isabella, clumsily taking up the cue given to her, and shaking her thin finger very slightly, for it shook itself naturally a good deal, "I don't say, Clotilde, my dear, that that delicious and most expensive bouquet was sent by the great wealthy Mr Elbraham; but I've a very shrewd suspicion. Haven't you, sister?"