“It is all very well to say, leave it to Providence!” cried that much tried mother, “if you had lived as long as I have, Ada, you would have found that all the most inconvenient things that happen in the world are said to be brought about by Providence--especially in the way of marriages. No, we must take precautions; Gussy must not go near Tottenham’s while he is there; and I’ll tell you what I will do. Harry is at home doing nothing particular, and probably quarrelling with your poor papa, who has so much to vex him. I have just been wondering how they could possibly get on with all of us away. I will write and tell him to offer himself to your aunt Mary for a visit.” “Harry! what good will Harry do?” asked Ada, wondering. “Well, my dear, at least he will be on the spot,” said Lady Augusta; and she breathed a long sigh, as if a weight had been taken off her mind. Any stop-gap, however imperfect, which takes, or seems to take, a responsibility off the mind, is enough to give a sense of relief to one so overborne by many businesses as Lady Augusta was. “And now, my dear, let us look over Mary’s patterns,” she said, drawing a chair towards Ada’s table, on which a mass of samples, of linen, silk, muslin, and every other fabric, known to human ingenuity, were lying, ticketed and arranged in packets. This was a little bit of pure enjoyment, which refreshed the anxious mother in the midst of all her cares. I need not tell what commotion was made in the household when the news crept out and stole secretly from one girl to another, that Edgar had come back. Mary and Beatrice put their curly heads together over it, and the result was a communication to the young Granton, which effectually fortified him against making himself a tool of any of poor Lady Augusta’s schemings to get rid of the danger. These two were the children of the house, and the elder sisters paid but little attention to their innocent conspiracies. The elders were more interesting personages than little Mary and Bee, though Mary was a predestined marchioness, and there was no knowing what Bee might come to in the way of matrimonial elevation. There are people, no doubt, who will think the old maid of the family its least interesting member; but you, dear unknown friend, my gentle reader, are not of that complexion; and there may be others who will feel that Ada’s obscure life was a poor enough thing to settle down to, after all the hopes and all the disappointments of youth, both of which are more exciting and sustaining than the simple monotony of such a commonplace existence. I am not sure, however, for my own part, whether Ada’s soft self-renunciation never expressed in words, and her constant readiness in trouble, and the numberless frocks she made for her poor children--and even her mother’s meetings, though the family laughed at them--were half so bewildering an anti-climax to the high aspirations of youth as was Helena’s Professor, and the somewhat