“She would have been broken-hearted if your answer had been any other than what it was,” said the young man, “and I shall take you to her the moment we get home, for I know that the dearest wish of her heart is to call you ‘daughter.’” “Thank God,” cried the Duchess, as she affectionately embraced the blushing girl; “and I may now confess that, from the first moment I saw you, I destined you for my son. It is not often that a match-making old mother is so entirely happy as I am at this moment.” Love-making is well known to be more catching (and often far more dangerous) than measles or scarlet-fever, and that perhaps is the reason why, upon the self-same afternoon, Wilfred, not to be behind his friend, proposed to and was accepted by pretty Mary Elthorne, whom he had known and loved from childhood upwards, and who had all the qualifications of person and disposition which would render the most fastidious of men happy. By the Duchess’s special desire, the Rector of Holmcastle, with his wife, now happily restored to health, and his affianced daughter, accompanied the rest of the party to Ribblesdale. The secret of the Duke’s engagement had been well kept; but when, on the evening of the day of his coming of age, Evelyn Manwaring entered the state ballroom of Ribblesdale Castle between the Duchess and her son, and in a perfect blaze of diamonds, then the County came to know that the wide lands and ancient Castle of Ribblesdale would have a worthy mistress as well as a noble master. The Duchess (_Dowager_, as she would thenceforward be rightly called) had that morning made over to her daughter-in-law elect the whole of the superb Ribblesdale Diamonds, and henceforward she appeared wearing the great Scarswicke Emerald alone. Arrangements were made to hasten on both marriages, and in little more than a month the newspapers announced that the Lord Bishop of Carlisle, assisted by the Reverend Charles Elthorne, Rector of Holmcastle, and the Reverend Peter Butterthwaite, Vicar of Ribblesdale-cum-Wappenshaw, had united both couples in Ribblesdale Church in the bonds of Holy Matrimony. His Grace of York, whose taste for aristocratic celebrations of a matrimonial kind is well known, would have been glad to officiate himself--but he was not asked. Wilfred, who, as Mr. Elthorne had predicted, was speedily appointed to the command of the North Lancashire Volunteers, at once took up his abode at Holmcastle, which, assisted by his wife’s cultivated taste, he is gradually beautifying--for, thanks to the coal discovered under his farms near Ormskirk, he is now a rich man. There is no more popular a couple in all Lancashire than Mr. and Mrs. Wilfred Manwaring.