Margaret found many changes since she left that neighbourhood, though none so strange to her as the change in her own prospects. At the Vicarage, Mrs. Somerton still resided, but her eldest daughter was now with her; a sharp, fractious spinster, who seemed but a bad exchange for her wilful, pretty sister, now fortunately Mrs. Compton. Mrs. Compton had a little girl, and was grown, her mother said, more steady; and Mr. Compton had just been in all the newspapers for playing at skittles before a church door, during divine service, at some place where he was quartered with a detachment. This last piece of information came from the acid sister; but Mrs. Somerton added that it was done for a bet, which in her opinion, at once explained and excused the action. The Trevors had for some time been in possession of Ashdale. They were very nice people, and already extremely popular with the neighbours. They were particularly civil to Margaret, took care to call upon her and to invite her, and to express a great deal of pleasure in her intended marriage. They little knew that they owed to Margaret's forbearance the estate they were now enjoying; for a word from her would have caused Mr. Grey to alter again, before his death, the distribution of his property; and they rather grudged her the ten thousand pounds which her uncle did bequeath to her--for very nice people are sometimes niggardly in their ideas; they thought her own ten thousand pounds ample for a single woman, and now that she was about to make a grand marriage, it was still less needful to her; but as no means occurred to them of getting this money back again, they contented themselves with _feeling_ the injury, and with fixing on little Richard, as the one of their children who would be sure to have had it, if Margaret had not robbed him of it. But there were little private family feelings, which these nice people took care to keep to themselves. They were invited to the breakfast, very reluctantly, on the part of Harriet; who superintended everything, and who hated them because they happened to have five very plain children. "Don't tell me, Uncle Gage, that it is not their fault!" she exclaimed, when Captain Gage ventured to remonstrate with her for her dislike. "Good people, always have handsome children. Your children were all handsome!" Captain Gage was silenced by this logical inference, "his children were good looking, he must confess." "Little sinners!" cried Harriet, "I'll have them all five to the breakfast, that I may make them ill for a fortnight. I know they are greedy by the look of them. I know they will eat as long as I choose to stuff them." And little Mrs. Trevor, when she yielded to Harriet's earnest entreaties, that the five darlings should see the wedding and appear at the breakfast, little thought of the fate in store for them.