"I beg your pardon, dear Miss Philippa, dear Miss Isabella," he cried, starting up with a sweet smile upon his face and the weak tears in his eyes. "I was so overpowered by the enjoyment of my own selfish happiness that I could think of nothing else." "Happiness?" faltered the Honourable Philippa; and her sister's hand trembled about her waist as if she were busily trying to unpick the gathers of her antique poplin gown. "Yes, my dear ladies," he said, "happiness!" and he took and kissed in turn their trembling hands. "Our dear Marie has accepted me, and with your consent, as I am growing an old man fast, and time is short, we will be married quietly almost at once." The Honourable Philippa sank back agitated _a la mode_. The Honourable Isabella sank back feeling really faint and with a strange fluttering at her heart, for, like some mad dream, the idea would come that, now his suit with Marie was perfectly hopeless, Captain Glen might yet say sweet words to her. It was a mad dream, but it lasted for some hours. It lasted till after Lord Henry had bade them affectionately farewell, and they had gone up to the young girls' room, and Marie had been kissed and blessed with prayers for her happiness. It lasted, too, until the honourable sisters had retired for the night; and somehow the joyous feeling of hope that had been deferred so long would keep rising brighter and brighter in the Honourable Isabella's breast. By the light of that hope she saw the manly, handsome face of Marcus Glen smiling upon her, as he came and told her that it was not too late even now, and that Ninon de l'Enclos was quite venerable when she loved. It was very pleasant, and an unwonted flush burned in her face--just such a flush as appeared there when she tried some of that peculiar white paste belonging to Lady Anna Maria Morton, which, applied to the cheeks, turned them of a peachy red. "It is very foolish of me," she murmured, in quite a cooing voice; "but I don't know: Lady Anna Maria is going to be married to a young and handsome husband, so why should not I?" Poor little lady! She was finishing her night toilet as she thought all this, and then it was time to put out the lights. There were two--an unwonted extravagance--burning, one on either side of the little old-fashioned toilet-glass, and with a smile of satisfaction she paused to look at herself before extinguishing the candles. There was but little vanity in her composition, and it left room for a great deal of latent affection. As she gazed into the old glass the extinguisher dropped from her hand; she uttered a pitiful cry, and sank into a chair sobbing and bewailing her lost youth. "No, no, no!" she sobbed; "he could never love such a dreadful thing as that!" And as she sat there the candles burned down, one to drop out at once, the other to flicker and dance in a ghostly way, but the Honourable Isabella heeded it not, for she was assisting at the interment of her love.