the house next door, the centre of which was Mrs. Meredith herself, smiling graciously upon someone who had arrived too early for her usual reception, and who was going disappointed away, when stopped by her arrival. Behind Mrs. Meredith was Cara, looking up to a handsome, dark-haired young man, who smiled upon her in a way which gave even to old Miss Cherry’s heart a sympathetic thrill. Surely he looked sincere, she said to herself; and what girl could resist such a look? For a moment Cherry forgot her terror and her precautions. Why should not Cara be the one happy girl whose happy love was to be blessed and sanctioned by everybody from the very beginning? Why should it not be so? Cherry asked herself. There was money enough in the family to make it possible to indulge this only child of their hearts in whatever she might please to want--a husband if she liked, or any other toy. It was not, however, with such light-minded expressions that Cherry treated so solemn a subject. If he loved her, and if she loved him, why should there be any difficulty? Cherry herself was ready to give up everything to ‘secure’ her darling’s ‘happiness.’ These were the words to use:--‘To secure Cara’s happiness!’ Then there need be no question of danger or trouble of any kind. The young couple would be married quite young, as it was for everybody’s happiness (people said) to be, and there need be no further anxiety, no further pain, on Cara’s account. They did not see her at the window, but stood talking, close together, the girl looking up, the young man looking down, until the door was opened, and they all disappeared. Cherry went back to her seat at the fireside and cried a little for pleasure at the thought of this happiness which was to come. To think of your child having precisely the blessedness, the good-fortune, which has not fallen to you, and which would have made your more happy than anything else,--could there be compensation more sweet? She cried for pleasure as she had cried before for anxiety, and sat with the firelight sparkling in that moisture which filled her eyes, and calculated how it could be done. Mrs. Meredith would allow her son something--as much at least as his school and university allowance, if not more; and though Aunt Charity was careful of her money, she could be liberal, too, on occasion. I am not sure even that it did not flash across Miss Cherry’s mind that one day the Hill and all its wealth would be her own; but she repulsed the thought with poignant compunction: unless, indeed, it might be that the Hill should go at once to Cara, and thus make her marriage, as of a queen-regnant able to endow her husband plentifully, the most wise and seemly thing in the world, even though she was so young. After all her troubles and terrors, Miss Cherry had a moment of exquisite pleasure as she sat by the fire and arranged it all. She forgot that the room was haunted, she forgot her