And the poor young mother lay back upon her pillows with the countenance of one beatified. She shook her head quietly, but a wavering light had come into her face like the far-off glimmer of some lamp of hope that flickered somewhere in the distance. She had given herself up to death with that gentle resignation which is peculiar to the young and the poor; but she was young, and perhaps a voice powerful enough, the voice of a great joy, might yet call her back from the dangerous brink. It was at this moment that a loud summons came to the door. It startled them all, and Agnes and her mother had a brief but earnest discussion as to whether the applicants should be admitted. Marjory paid but little attention for the first moment. She drew her shawl round her, and wiped the traces of tears from her eyes, and rose to go away before the visitors, if there were visitors, should appear. But her attention was roused when she heard what voice it was which asked admittance when the knocking had remained for some time unheeded. “Is there any one in? Open the door, open the door!” said the new-comer. It was Mr. Charles. A murmur of other voices with him came in like a faint chorus; and once more quickly and eagerly came the knocking at the door. CHAPTER XVI. Mr. Charles had been seated all alone in the library of his house, a room which confused him much, seeing that it was a library, full of books, such as they were, yet not his, nor like anything that could have been his. Had he been condemned to sit much in this room, it would have been impossible for him to rest without remodelling and changing it; but thanks to golf and the club, he was not tempted to remain for too long a time at one sitting. This day, however, accident, which interferes with golf as much as with other things, had broken up one of the most promising matches ever arranged, and left Mr. Charles disconsolate. He came home to seek Marjory, and found Marjory gone; even little Milly had her own engagements; and he was thus left to himself. It gave him a realization of the time which might come, if Marjory were to marry, for instance, and he childless, daughterless, with nobody to make any house feel like home, might be left to the cold comfort of George’s Square. He did not like the idea. He sat down in the library, as we have said, with a statistical work before him--dry reading, but he felt still more dry. He was out of his element, absent from his favourite surroundings, alone; and everything was against him. How could he tell if he should ever again find himself comfortably established in his sunny old tower, in the room which he had garnished and arranged so carefully with all the accumulations of his life? “These young women” were about to pull down his old tower about his ears; or if they could be stopped in that, here was this other story, this strange marriage of Tom’s, this peasant aspiring to the name of Heriot, with her child, who would bring into the