"J'expect qu'elles sorteraient quand nous sommes tous loin. C'est toujours le fashion!" sighed Chrissie, acutely conscious that her French was superior to that of her friend, but politely ignoring the fact. "Je demanderai a ma mere--er--er--(how do you say `pay calls'?)--a faire une visite, aussitot que possible." "Moi aussi," assented Kitty. "Et puis vous savez, elle peut dit: `J'espere, Madame Vanburgh, que vos mademoiselles seraient tres grand amies avec mes filles. Voulez vous permittez qu'elles venez a the mercredi prochaine?'" "Oui, et puis elles nous inviteraient en retourn." Christabel tossed her mane over her shoulders and smiled in anticipation. She made up her mind then and there to decorate her bedroom with her most treasured nick-nacks on the afternoon of the Vanburghs' visit, and to keep her new hair ribbon unused for the occasion. But no Miss Vanburghs appeared! The next day passed, and the next, and still another, and still no sign of a feminine presence lightened the dark windows of the Grange. The solemn butler flitted to and fro; the figure of a white-haired man could be dimly discerned, stretched upon a sofa, in the oak-panelled apartment immediately facing the porch-room of Thurston House; but that was all that the most unremitting scrutiny could discover. Nan shivered at an attic window for an hour on end, with no more exciting result than a glimpse of a tablecloth and a row of silver dishes; and the great nailed door remained persistently closed. And then the blow fell! There were no Miss Vanburghs! There was not even a Mrs Vanburgh! Could it be believed there was no woman in the family--no one but an old invalid gentleman, who spent his days on a sofa, or in a wheeled chair being slowly driven about the garden? A solitary man as tenant of the Grange! The finest house in the neighbourhood monopolised by an invalid! The ball-room, the billiard-room, the music-room, given over to the possession of one who would never use them; the stables unused; the gardens deserted! The Rendell girls could not believe it. It was too horrible to be true. Ermyntrude, Evangeline, and Gabrielle had no existence. The happy dreams which had been woven about them could never be fulfilled. It was indeed a cruel and crushing disappointment. "What can he want with a house like that, the selfish, horrid creature?" demanded Agatha, nigh to tears. "If he is an invalid, what is the use of having a house big enough to hold a regiment of soldiers? There are hundreds of villas where he might have been as ill as he liked, without monopolising our only Grange! What is to become of us, if all the best houses in the country are sold to hermits, and invalids, and white- haired old patriarchs, with not a single child to boast of! Selfish! Inconsiderate!"