Very indignant was her brother when informed of what he considered such an extremely derogatory proceeding. “The Bradshaws had always married well, and why she should want to make a fool of herself he did not know.” Alice appeared to give way to the storm, but when a few months later she repeated her visit to London, she one day went out, was quietly married to the man of her choice, and only returned to her friends to bid them good-bye, and inform them that she was now Mrs. Bingham. The first notification which her brother received of it was on reading the notice in the columns of the “Times;” and had the feelings of society permitted a man to fight a duel with his brother-in-law, Harry Bradshaw would most unquestionably have called him out. As it was, he was forced to content himself with solemnly denouncing his sister, and writing a letter to her husband, expressing his sentiments towards him, and these sentiments were of such a nature that no future communication ever passed between them. Shortly after, his younger sister married, with his consent, if not with his absolute approval. Percy Maynard was a barrister, with a fair practice and a moderate fortune, and although Captain Bradshaw had rather that his sister had fallen in love with one of the neighbouring proprietors, still, as he really liked the man she had chosen, he made no serious objections to the match. He himself had at that time been for some years a widower, having lost his wife after only four years of happy married life, leaving him one little girl. Two or three years later he married again, but his second wife bore him no children. His daughter, Laura, grew up a spoilt child, very loveable in her happy home, but with more than all her father’s fiery temper, and an almost sullen obstinacy, which was certainly no ingredient of his disposition. So she grew up until she was eighteen, and then an event occurred which changed all Harry Bradshaw’s hopes and plans, and embittered his whole future life. Laura followed her aunt Alice’s example. She formed an acquaintance with a lawyer’s clerk, who sometimes came down instead of his principal to transact business with her father. How Laura met him, what opportunities there were for their first casual acquaintance to ripen into intimacy and then into love, Captain Bradshaw never knew and never inquired. Undoubtedly their interviews had taken place almost entirely during the three or four months of each year which the family spent in London, where Laura was in the habit of frequently going out attended only by her maid. However, by some accident he discovered it, a stormy scene followed, Laura’s temper rose as quickly as her father’s, she openly declared she had been for some weeks secretly married, and was not ashamed to own it. This brought matters to a climax, and Laura, half an hour afterwards, left the house never to return.