It is Christmas-time, their first Christmas since their return to the Grange; and Annie and her husband are expecting some welcome guests to celebrate this event and Annie’s final renunciation of her ambition for that entire devotion to home and husband which has now become her chief delight. For Annie has left the stage, with its struggles, its failures, and its triumphs, forever, not without some regrets at bidding farewell to old friends, old usages, and a life which had had many pleasures for her; but with new happiness in the thought that she can now devote herself more entirely than before to the husband and children in whom all her affection is centered. For in the long, dim picture-gallery where Harry saw the demure little governess playing battledoor and shuttlecock years ago two fair-haired boys are laughing and shouting at play. Their father is rather disappointed that they have his own blue eyes and curly, fair hair, and he is in great anxiety lest they should grow up like him in mind, instead of being “clever” like their mother; but Annie is troubled with no such fears, and is quite contented with her boys as they are. Two more Braithwaites lie in the family vault in Garstone Churchyard. The first to go to his rest was Stephen, who lived but very few months after that miserable scene in which he shot his cousin in his desperate wretchedness. Those months were the most peaceful of his unhappy life, for he passed them at Kirby Park, to which Annie had herself gently persuaded him to come. She never wearied in her patient devotion to him, in her attention to his wants, in her bright endeavors to amuse and please him. Harry seconded her efforts with gentleness which was touching in the big, strong man; and the cripple’s feelings were too strong and his penetration too keen for him not to appreciate rightly every kind act and tone in the people about him. Wilfred lies in the vault too; he was killed by a fall from his horse in the hunting-field in the winter following the sale of the Grange, and they buried him beside his father and cousin. A better fate is in store for the youngest brother, William. “The child” is now Captain Braithwaite, and his letters to Garstone are full of references to the loveliest girl that ever was seen and mysterious hints that he has a surprise in store for them--from which and a certain incoherency of style in his letters Annie does not need much penetration to decide that he is going to be married. Sir George passes most of the year in chambers in town, and has never found the courage to begin a new battle with fate; he is still unmarried, and there seems every probability that the title will pass in course of time to Harry and his eldest son.