“I do not consider them daft ideas: and that Effie should go from one to another like a puppet when you pull the strings----” “Oh, I am not a clever person; I cannot meet you with your images and your metaphors; but this I can say,” cried Mrs. Ogilvie, solemnly, “that it is just your niece’s happiness that is at stake, and if you come between her and what is just and right, the blame will be yours and not mine.” Mr. Moubray went away very much troubled, with this in his mind. Effie had not loved Fred, and it was possible that she might love Ronald, that she might have had an inclination towards him all along; but was it possible that she should thus change--put down one and take up another--resign even the man she loved not, as no longer a good match, and accept the man she might love, because he was? Marriage without love is a horror to every pure mind; it was to the minister the most abhorrent of all thoughts: and yet it was not so degrading, so deplorable as this. He went home to his lonely house with a great oppression on his soul. What could he say, what advise to the young and tender creature who had been brought to such a pass, and who had to find her way out of it, he could not tell how? He had nothing to say to her. He could not give her a counsel; he did not even know how to approach the subject. He had to leave her alone at this crisis of her fate. The actual crisis came quite unexpectedly when no one thought it near. It had come to be December, and Christmas, which should have witnessed the marriage, was not far off. The Diroms were said to be preparing to leave Allonby; but except when they were met riding or driving, they were little seen by the neighbours, few of whom, to tell the truth, had shown much interest in them since the downfall. Suddenly, in the afternoon of one of those dull winter days when the skies had begun to darken and the sun had set, the familiar dog-cart, which had been there so often, dashed in at the open gates of Gilston and Fred Dirom jumped out. He startled old George first of all by asking, not for Miss, but Mrs. Ogilvie. “Miss Effie is in, sir. I will tell her in a moment,” George said, half from opposition, half because he could not believe his ears. “I want to see Mrs. Ogilvie,” replied the young man, and he was ushered in accordingly, not without a murmured protest on the part of the old servant, who did not understand this novel method of procedure.