“Only to midsummer, you know, May,” said the boy, “whatever regiment I may get my commission in, I’m sure of some weeks at home first. That’s to say with Baldwin,” he added, for “home,” alas, was a mere memory of the past to the two orphans. “He is so very kind, May. I really don’t know how we are ever to thank him for it.” “He is indeed,” said Marion warmly, so warmly that Harry, who had but small experience of that queer thing, a woman’s heart, smiled to himself, and want away considerably happier in mind about his sister for this corroboration, as he thought it, of a very pleasant suspicion which had lately entered his imagination. “It would suit so capitally,” he thought to himself. “In every way he’s a thorough good fellow. Not so clever as May, certainly, but they’d get on just as well for all that.” Perhaps so, Harry. It is a question, and a not easily answered one, as to how far congeniality of mind is necessary to a happy marriage. But certainly, to give two such different natures as those of Geoffrey Baldwin and Marion Vere, a chance of assimilating in the long run, one element is indispensable, a good foundation of mutual love. Not friendship, however sincere, not esteem, however great—but love—of which the former are but a part. “And not necessarily even that,” say some, from whom nevertheless I differ in opinion. After Harry had gone, it was the old monotonous story again. It was impossible for her to ride so much as while her brother was with them, for the Copley girls were not always to be got hold of, and Mr. Baldwin, as Marion observed with some surprise, rather fought shy of tête-à-tête excursions. “Who would have thought he was so prudish,” she said to herself. “It’s rather misplaced, for I’m sure everybody knows he is just like a sort of uncle or brother to me.” “Everybody” however, in Brentshire, is not in the habit of thinking anything so natural and innocent, and Geoffrey was wise in his generation. Though in this instance really, the Mrs. Grundys of the neighbourhood might have been excused for remarking the very palpable and undeniable fact, that Mr. Baldwin was a remarkably handsome bachelor of only seven or eight and twenty, and Miss Vere “a pretty pale girl” of little more than nineteen. “The sort of girl too that manages to get herself admired by gentlemen, though why I really can’t see,” remarked one of the sister-hood to her confidante for the time. Who in reply observed that “no more could she.” Adding, moreover, that, “Everyone knows what that sort of story-book affair is sure to end in. Young guardian and interesting ward! The girl knew well enough what she was about. Evidently she had not taken up her quarters with that odious Miss Tremlett for nothing. Had her father lived, or left her better off, she might have looked higher. But as things were she had done wisely not to quarrel with her bread-and-butter.”