It is impossible for any story, unless comprised within a very short space, to be written in full detail, and therefore I must beg the gentle reader to pardon me if I pass over a little more than a year, jumping over the marriage of Frederick Eastwood and all its attendant circumstances, which, indeed, was not pleasant to dwell upon. To make this event possible Mrs. Eastwood had to sacrifice a portion of her income, which she did with a pained and miserable sense of unwillingness. It would be impossible for anything to have been more repulsive or disagreeable to her than the marriage itself, and yet she had to subtract largely from her own living to render it possible. I cannot rightly tell why she did not resist this claim. It was partly, I think, out of horror at herself for being reluctant to sacrifice anything or everything to secure “the happiness” of one of her children--a fictitious motive, but one which had great force with her. The consequence was that old Brownlow, who had seen all the children grow up, and to whose services and lectures they had been used all their lives, had to be “put down” like the carriage. Mrs. Eastwood could no longer afford a costly and solemn butler; she laughed tremulously at the idea that this was a grievance, and declared aloud that she had always preferred having maids to wait at table. But it was a grievance, for Brownlow was an old and faithful servant, upon whom Mrs. Eastwood had relied much, and he married the cook, also a most important functionary in the house, and disordered the establishment from top to bottom. Nobody but the Molyneuxes thought the less of Mrs. Eastwood because the door at The Elms was now opened by a nice-looking maid; but _they_ did note her descent in the social scale, and this was very irksome to her. Brownlow became the greengrocer of the district, and was always at hand round the corner among the beetroots and cabbages, ready to respond to any call, and to wait at all the dinner-parties; but still it was not the same thing as having a man in the house. No carriage and no butler! These things she had given up for Frederick, and what was she to give up for Nelly when the time came? The fact was, however, that Nelly would not allow the time to come. Things remained almost exactly in the same position as they had done at the beginning of this story, so far as Nelly was concerned. Ernest Molyneux still went and came, occasionally taking upon himself the aspect of son of the house, but quite as often making himself generally disagreeable, making speeches which were sharply sarcastic or ill-tempered, under the guise of civility, to Mrs. Eastwood, and torturing Nelly with heats and chills of feeling. He had taken no step to make the marriage possible in his own person. He was as idle as ever, lounging about his clubs and The Elms, interfering with all their arrangements, a man with nothing to do. Now and then he wrote