"For a few hours. I like him to come to me sometimes; he is a great favourite of mine. Grace, do you know what I have often wished--that that old story, that he proposed for _you_, had been fact instead of misapprehension. With you he would have found the happiness he missed with Adela." A flush passed over Grace's fair, placid face. She bent her head. "Marriages are said, you know, to be made in heaven," she remarked, looking up with a smile; "so I conclude that all must have been right. Were the years to come over again, Adela would act very differently. She--oh, Aunt Margery, the snowy sprays are disappearing!" "Ay; the sun has come out, and the snow melts. Few pleasant things last long in this world, child; something or other comes to mar them. But I thought you meant to go to Moat Grange this morning, Grace. You should start at once; it has struck eleven." "I said I should like to see Selina, and to call on Mrs. Dalrymple on the way." "Well, do so. Selina will receive you with open arms. She must be amazingly lonely, shut up in that dreary house from year's end to year's end. They see no company." Grace put her tatting into its little basket, and rose. "Are you sure you shall not feel dull at being left, Aunt Margery?" she stayed to ask. "I never feel dull, Grace." Barely had Grace started on her walk, when the maid came to the dressing-room to say the Rector had called. "Will you see him, ma'am?" she inquired. "Yes, Annis, I wish to see him," was Miss Upton's reply, as she rose from her recumbent position on the sofa and sat down upon it. Annis folded a grey shawl over her mistress's knees, put a footstool under her feet, and sent up Mr. Cleveland. After a short time given to subjects of more vital importance, Miss Upton began to talk of her worldly affairs, induced to it possibly by a question of the Rector's as to whether all things were settled. "You mean my will, I suppose," she answered, slightly smiling. "Yes, it is settled and done with. Will you be surprised to hear that I made my will within a month of coming into this estate, and that it has never been altered?" "Indeed!" he remarked. "I added a codicil to it last year, specifying the legacies I wish to bequeath; but the substance of the will, with its bequest, Court Netherleigh, remains unchanged." Mr. Cleveland opened his lips to speak, and closed them again. In the impulse of the moment, he was about to say, "To whom have you left it?" But he remembered that it was a question he could not properly put. "You were about to ask me who it is that will inherit this property, and you do not like to do so," she said, nodding to him pleasantly. "Well----" "I beg your pardon," he interrupted. "The thought did arise to me, and I almost forgot myself." "And very natural that it should arise to you. I am about to tell you all about it. I meant to do so before my death: as well now as any other time." "Have you left it to Lord Acorn?"