"Do you like"--still chuckling--"to be told a piece of news or to guess it?" "I like to be told it." "Well, then"--with a dramatic pause--"we are going to have a wedding in the family!" "My dear girl!" cries he, smiling very good-naturedly, and with a sensation that, though not violent, is the reverse of annoyance. "Hurrah! So he has come at last! Who is he? How dark you have kept him!" Cecilia shakes her head and gives a short and rosy laugh. "Oh, it is not I! You are wide of the mark." "Your father?"--in a shocked voice. He has a confused and illogical feeling that a second marriage on the part of Mr. Wilson would be a slight upon Amelia's memory. "_Father!_"--with an accent that plainly shows him he is still further afield than in his first conjecture--"poor father! No, indeed; Heaven forbid! Fancy me with a stepmother!" She pauses to give a shudder at the idea, while Jim gapes blankly at her, wondering whether she has gone off her head. "Oh no; it is neither father nor I! No wonder you look mystified. It is--_Sybilla!_" "SYBILLA!!!!" Although Mr. Burgoyne has not got it on his conscience that he has ever either expressed or felt anything but the most strenuous and entire disbelief in Sybilla's maladies, yet it has never occurred to him as possible that she should engage in any occupation nearer akin to the ordinary avocations of life than imbibing tonics through tubes and eating beef essences out of cups. "She is going to marry Dr. Crump!" continues Cecilia, not on the whole dissatisfied with the effect of her torpedo. "When she told father, she said that he had saved her life, and that the least she could do was to dedicate the poor remainder of it to him. She tells other people that she is marrying him because we wish it! You know that that was always her way." "SYBILLA!!" "I thought that there must be something in the wind, as since the beginning of the month she has never once wished us good-bye; and the housemaid upset the ink-bottle over the book of prescriptions without her ever finding it out; and the clinical thermometer has not appeared for a week!" "SYBILLA!!!" "I thought I should surprise you; it gives one a disgust for the idea of marrying altogether, does not it? I have come to the conclusion that I do not care now if I never marry. Father and I get on quite happily together; and when one is well off, one can really be very fairly content in a single state; and, at all events, I am sure I do not envy Sybilla." "Nor I Crump"--with an emphasis so intense that Cecilia bursts out into a laugh of a more genuine character than any she has yet indulged in. "You will have to give her away!" she cries, as soon as she can again speak distinctly. "Father will marry her, of course, and you must give her away. I am sure she will insist upon it." "She will have to make haste, then," returns he, recovering enough from his first stupefaction to join Cecilia in her mirth; "for I shall not be here much longer."