“Oh, Gus, you know it wasn’t me!” cried Marie, clinging to the other arm. His face softened as he looked from one to another. “It wasn’t either of you,” he said. “I was cross, too. It is the cold--it is the winter that is coming. One can’t help it.” It was not winter that was coming, but still there was a chill little breeze playing about, and the afternoon was beginning to cloud over. Lady Markham coming down stairs was struck by the group in the full light of the fire, which threw a ruddy gleam into the clouded daylight. Something touched her in it. She paused and stood beside them, looking at him kindly. “You must not let them bother you. You are too kind to them,” she said. Just then the post-bag came in; and Mrs. Lenny along with it, eager, as people who never have any letters to speak of always are, about the post. They all gathered about while the bag was opened and the letters distributed. All that Mrs. Lenny got was a newspaper--a queer little tropical broadsheet, which was of more importance, as it turned out, than all the letters which the others were reading. She put herself by the side of the fire to look over it, while Lady Markham in the window opened her correspondence, and Gus took the stamps off a foreign letter he had received to give them to Bell and Marie. The little girls were in all the fervour of stamp-collecting. They had a book full of the choicest specimens, and this was just the kind of taste in which Sir Gus could sympathise. He was dividing the stamps between them equally, bending his little brown head to the level of Marie, for Bell was now quite as tall as her brother. Their little chatter was restrained, for the sake of mamma and Colonel Lenny, who were both reading letters, into a soft hum of accompaniment, which somehow harmonised with the ruddy glow of the fire behind them, warming the dull air of the afternoon. “That will make the German ones complete,” Bell was saying. And, “Oh, if I had only a Greek, like Bell, I should be happy!” cried Marie. The little rustle of the newspaper in Mrs. Lenny’s hand was almost as loud as their subdued voices. All at once, into the midst of this quiet, there came a cry, a laughing, a weeping, and Mrs. Lenny, jumping up, throwing down the chair she had been sitting on, rushed at Sir Gus, thrusting the paper before him, and grasping his arm with all her force. “Oh, Gus, Gus, Gus!” she cried, “Oh, Colonel, look here! Gavestonville estate’s in the market. The old house is going to be sold again. Oh, Colonel, why haven’t we got any money to buy it, you and me!” “Give it here,” said Sir Gus.