Mrs. Ogilvie, to do her justice, was anxious to obviate any feeling of this kind. The very first time he dined there after her marriage, she took him aside into a corner of the drawing-room, and talked to him privately. “I hope there will be no difference, Mr. Moubray,” she said; “I hope you will not let it make any difference that I am here.” “Difference?” said John, startled a little. He had already felt the difference, but had made up his mind to it as a thing that must be. “I know,” said the lady, “that I’m not clever enough to take your sister’s place; but so far as a good meaning goes, and a real desire to be a mother to the children, and a friend to you, if you will let me, nobody could be better disposed than I am, if you will just take me at my word.” The minister was so unprepared for any such speech that he stammered a little over his reply. “My sister,” he said, “had no pretensions to be clever. That was never the ground my poor Jeanie took up. She was a good woman, and very dear to----very dear to those she belonged to,” he said, with a huskiness in his voice. “That’s just what I say. I come here in a way that is hard upon a woman, with one before me that I will always be compared to. But this one thing I must say, that I hope you will come about the house just as often as you used to do, and in the same way, coming in whenever it enters your head to do so, and believing that you are always welcome. Always welcome. I don’t say I will always be here, for I think it only right to keep up with society (if it were but for Effie’s sake) more than the last Mrs. Ogilvie did. But I will never be happy if you don’t come out and in just in your ordinary, Mr. Moubray, just as you’ve always been accustomed to do.” John Moubray went home after this address with a mingled sense of humour and vexation and approval. It made him half angry to be invited to his brother-in-law’s house in this way, as if he required invitation. But, at the same time, he did not deny that she meant well. And she did mean well. She meant to make Effie one of the most complete of young ladies, and Gilston the model country-seat of a Scots gentleman. She meant to do her duty to the most minute particular. She meant her husband to be happy, and her children to be clothed in scarlet and prosperity, and comfort to be diffused around.