At last all was still. Victoria’s brain, wide awake and unusually alert for this hour of the night, was still occupied with the tiresome topics of the afternoon. She felt that she could not sleep until she had imparted some of the new ideas with which it was teeming to some one, and that some one must be Honor. Her sister could not yet be asleep, Victoria thought; so leaving her window wide open, she went across the hall and around the gallery to Honor’s room and knocked softly on the door. Her sister opened it at once. “What is the matter, Vic?” she asked. “Are you ill? Why, you are still in your dress, and you came up two hours ago!” “I know it. Hush, Honor, don’t speak so loud! I don’t want any one to hear me. Do you mind if I come in and talk? Are you very sleepy?” “No, not a bit sleepy. Come in, of course. I want especially to see you. What is the matter, Vic? You have looked so anxious all the afternoon, and not a bit like yourself. What is it?” “It is all Aunt Sophia,” said Victoria, curling herself up on the foot of the bed. “Aunt Sophia! Why, what has she been saying? I thought you were too busy, when you were with her, to talk.” “Is Aunt Sophia ever too busy to say what she wants to?” “But what was it about?” “Dave Carney, for one thing.” Honor laughed. “Surely, my dear child, you are not staying up half the night just because Aunt Sophia sees fit to criticise Dave Carney? If I minded her as much as that, I should never sleep a wink after she had been talking about poor B. Lafferty, who, by the way, declares that she is going to-morrow ‘for certain sure!’ What does she say about Dave?” “Oh, she doesn’t think he is honest, because she was sure she saw him going into a pawnbroker’s shop. As if that proved anything! She might just as well say that I wasn’t, because I sold the gold and the—” Victoria paused. “Not quite the same thing,” said Honor, “for you really had the things to sell; but I can’t imagine where Dave Carney gets anything to pawn. But I can’t think why you are so worried, Vic. Aunt Sophia has been saying that sort of thing all our lives.” “Oh, I know that. It isn’t _that_ I am worried about, of course, Honor. She was speaking about something else, that I hadn’t thought of before. Something about Katherine.” “What about her?” asked Honor, quickly. “Well, she said first that she was selfish and extravagant, and then—I really hate to repeat it, Honor, for it doesn’t seem a bit nice, but I must tell you—then she said it didn’t make so much difference as she was going to marry a rich man, or ‘make a good match,’ as she expressed it. Don’t you think it was rather disagreeable for Aunt Sophia to say that? And whom _do_ you suppose she meant, Honor?” “Mr. Madison, of course.” Honor’s voice was so peculiar that Victoria glanced at her sharply, but it was too dark in the room for her to see her face very clearly. “Yes, Mr. Madison; but I don’t see how you happened to guess it so quickly.”