‘Oh, come!’ said Roger, hastily, ‘Mrs. Johnson is well known to be a match-maker.’ ‘Well,’ said the doctor, a little abashed, ‘we’ll hope that that idea is nothing but imagination, of course.’ ‘It may be, or it may not be so,’ here observed Michael, joining in the conversation for the first time, and using his scourge upon himself out of sheer perversity of spirit. ‘But I should say if it is, imagination has got a better handle to lay hold of than it usually has, in Bradstane.’ ‘Why—do you know anything? Have you heard anything?’ both the others inquired, turning upon him with greedy eagerness. ‘Nothing in the world,’ said Michael, coldly, ‘except what my own senses tell me. I met them all out riding this morning—Askam and Magdalen; Miss Askam and Gilbert. I immediately thought of that possibility, for some reason—and thought it a very likely one too.’ ‘It is not likely she would favour him,’ said Dr. Rowntree, with an angry sniff, ‘however he might like her.’ Michael shrugged his shoulders. For some reason, unknown to himself, he felt impelled to combat the doctor—try to dispel the _couleur de rose_ in which he saw all that he liked or loved. ‘No one can even hazard a guess on such a subject,’ said he; ‘but if he “liked” her, as you express it, things might be made very unpleasant for her, if she didn’t see her way to liking him in return.’ ‘Ah—ow!’ gasped Dr. Rowntree, as this possibility flashed across his mind. ‘I knew she had her troubles,’ he concluded, darkly. Roger burst out laughing. Michael said not another word. It sometimes happened that he had occasion, as now, to mention Gilbert’s name, in the course of conversation, when it always fell from his lips as calmly and coldly as if it had been the name of some one unknown. ‘I suppose,’ said Roger, ‘that she will be at _the_ concert?’ ‘Oh yes. She has promised them to go to that. It was raining last night when her carriage came for her, and she begged to set me down at my house. So I went with her, and had a little conversation with her. She insists upon joining at my Christmas-tree. She says she knows of a lot of things the children want which their mother would never tell me of—and I who thought she told me everything! And then she said, “Fancy their faces, you know, when they every one find two presents instead of only one. It will be worth anything, just to look at them.” And she laughed at the idea. So she is to call upon my sister to-morrow, and they will settle it all between them. But you’ll be at my house at the party, of course, and then you can see and judge for yourselves.’ Neither of the young men said anything to this, and Dr. Rowntree, expressing an opinion that he had tarried long enough, got up from his chair, and took his departure. There was silence for a little while, and then Roger said, ‘What an old enthusiast he is when he takes a fancy to any one.’