This Jean took very sedately, not seeing anything wonderful in it, and would then enter into details which chilled both the elder and the younger dreamer. Nevertheless, when Lilias was at church, or when she was pensive, or when she grew tired of inventing the old Australian cousin, and wanted something more definite, she turned back to this idea of the hospital with a slightly subdued sense of power. If that old man should never turn up--if nothing should happen--if she should be intended by Providence to live like Margaret and Jean all her life, which was perhaps a somewhat depressing idea, notwithstanding her love and admiration for her sisters--why, then there was this idea to fall back upon. She would make it a hospital. She would become a benefactor of her kind; she would devote herself to it like a sister of charity. There were moods and moments when this was a thing which pleased the imagination of the dreaming girl. But Margaret rejected the hospital with disdain and almost anger. She took Jean to task for the suggestion when they were alone. "Can you not see," she said, "that to put Quixotic fancies into a young head is just criminal? They come quick enough of themselves. Next to having everything your heart can desire, what's so enticing as to give up everything at her age? You have never grown any older or any wiser yourself, my dear. I know that well enough, and I like you, perhaps, all the better. But Lilias is not like us. She is Murray of Murkley. If it had been me at her age, my word but I would have made you all stand about! But it's better as it is. She will marry, which most likely I never would have done, for I'm perhaps too much of a man myself to be troubled with gentlemen. She'll marry and raise up the old house." To this Jean consented plaintively, yet with a little excitement. "But who will she marry?" Jean asked; "and, if she were married to-morrow, where are they to get the money to restore New Murkley? He would be for selling it, far more likely." Margaret had often been made to perceive before this that Jean, though she was not clever, by dint of approaching a new subject simply from a natural point of view, often threw unexpected light upon it. This was the case now. A burst or flood of illumination of the most disagreeable kind suddenly burst upon her with these words. "Sell it!" she cried, with a kind of horror--"bless me! I never thought of that." "Or suppose it was some person from England, that would think nothing of spending thousands----" This was how Miss Jean always spoilt a point when she had made one. Her sister laughed.