After a great many questions had been asked by Lucy and answered by Margaret, in whose manner there was an indefinable change which her friend felt very soon, and which puzzled her, Margaret took Miss Crofton upstairs for an inspection of little Gertrude and the "thoroughly confidential" talk for which Lucy declared herself irrepressibly eager. "If she knew--if she only knew--this pure, harmless creature," Margaret thought, with a pang of fierce pain as Lucy Crofton hugged the child and talked to her, and appealed to the nurse in support of her admiration, for which Gerty was poutingly ungrateful,--"if she did but know how it has been with me since we last met, and how it is with my child!" "Yon are shivering, Margaret. You seem very cold. Let me poke the fire up before we settle ourselves. And now tell me all about yourself, how you really are; of course one could not ask before that young Meredith. I want to see his father so much. By the bye, Haldane told me you knew him so well in Australia. You don't look very well, I think, but you are much stronger than when you went abroad." "I am much stronger," said Margaret. "But before I talk about myself, and I have a deal to tell you,"--Miss Crofton was delighted,--"I want to talk to you about yourself and Haldane." Miss Crofton was perfectly willing to enter on so congenial a subject, and she told Margaret all about the arrangements, which included many festive proceedings, to which the girl naturally attached pleasurable anticipations. When she had reached that portion of the programme which included the names and dresses of the bridesmaids, she stopped abruptly, and said with some embarrassment: "Why do you look so grave, Margaret?--is anything wrong?" Then she added, before Margaret could speak, "Ah, I know, you don't like a gay wedding; I remember how quiet your own was; but, you see, it would seem so odd if mine wasn't gay, and besides, I like it; it's not the same, you know." "I know, dear," Margaret said very gently, "it is not at all the same thing, and I can quite understand your wishing to have a gay wedding. But I want you to listen to me, and to do what I am going: to ask you. It is something in which you can do me a great service." This was delightful, this was being the "great friend," indeed this was very like being the favourite sister-in-law. So Lucy promptly knelt down by Margaret's chair, and putting her arm round her, assured her, with much emphasis, of her readiness to do anything she could for her pleasure. There was a short pause, during which Margaret looked at the girl with a grave sweet smile, and took her disengaged hand; then she spoke: "Haldane is coming here very soon, my father tells me. What leave has he got? "A month." "Now Lucy, don't be astonished, and don't say no at once. I want you to be married during his leave, instead of waiting until the autumn."