I had not, but I had often heard of him in certain circles of our camp society, as well as from Sir William Treherne. And I now suddenly recollected that, in talking over his son's marriage, the latter had expressed some surprise at the news Treherne had given, that this gay bachelor about town, whose society he had been always chary of cultivating for fear of harm to "the boy," had been engaged for some time to a member of the Johnston family. This was, of course, Miss Johnston--Penelope. I would have let the subject drop, but Miss Lisabel revived it. "So you have heard a deal about Francis? No wonder!---is he not a charming person?--and very much thought of in London society? Do tell us all you heard about him?" Treherne gave me a look. "Oh! you'll never get anything out of the Doctor. He knows everybody, and everybody tells him everything, but there it ends. He is a perfect tomb--a sarcophagus of silence, as a fellow once called him." Miss Lisabel held up her hands, and vowed she was really afraid of me. Miss Johnston said, sharply, "She liked candid people: a sarcophagus of silence implied a 'body' inside." At which all laughed, except the second sister, who said, with some warmth, "She thought there were few qualities more rare and valuable than the power of keeping a secret." "Of course, Dora thinks so. Doctor, my sister, there, is the most secretive little mouse that ever was born. Red-hot pincers could not force from her what she did not choose to tell, about herself or other people." I well believe that. One sometimes finds that combination of natural frankness, and exceeding reticence, when reticence is necessary. The "mouse" had justified her name by being silent nearly all dinner-time, though it was not the silence of either sullenness or abstraction. But when she was afterwards accused of delighting in a secret, "running away with it, and hiding it in her hole, like a bit of cheese," she looked up, and said, emphatically:-- "That is a mistake, Lisabel." "A fib, you mean. Augustus, do you know my sisters call me a dreadful story-teller," smiling at him, as if she thought it the best joke in the world. "I said, a mistake, and meant nothing more." "Do tell us, child, what you really meant, if it is possible to get it out of you," observed the eldest sister; and the poor "mouse," thus driven into a corner, looked round the table with those bright eyes of hers. "Lisabel mistakes; I do not delight in secrets. I think people ought not to have any, but to be of one mind in a house." (She studies her Bible, then, for the phrase came out as naturally as one quotes habitual phrases, scarcely conscious whence one has learned them). "Those who really care for one another, are much happier when they tell one another everything; there is nothing so dangerous as a secret. Better never have one, but, having it, if one ought to keep it at all, one ought to keep it to the death."