“He was good for a great deal when he was at Pitcomlie,” said Marjory, feeling her cheek flush in spite of herself. “A kinder friend never appeared in a melancholy house.” “He was all that--all that,” said Mr. Charles, hastily. “That is exactly what I should have expected to hear,” said Seton. “You have hit off his character in a word. Ready to do anything for anybody; always serviceable; good for other people’s concerns, but letting his own, you know, go to the dogs. When I said good-for-nothing, I ought to have said good for everybody but himself.” “That’s a fatal kind of amiability,” said Mr. Charles, falling into this depreciatory estimate with a readiness which disgusted the two feminine partizans, to whom it was impossible to see their friend assailed without striking a blow in his defence. “I have known many men like that, nobody’s enemy but their own--” “I think you would speak a little more warmly, Uncle Charles,” said Marjory, with a burst of which she was herself ashamed, “if you remembered all that Mr. Fanshawe did for us. Amiability does not make a man do what he did. Have you forgotten poor Tom’s bedside? and all his kindness to my father, and after--I beg your pardon; it is bad taste to introduce our private matters. But, Mr. Seton, I should be a wretch if I allowed anyone to speak disparagingly of Mr. Fanshawe without telling what I know.” “Yes, yes; I quite understand,” said Seton, with a suppressed smile. “Ladies always give him that character. He is the most serviceable fellow. But I speak of his own concerns; he is a very unsatisfactory man to have anything to do with in business, for example. He is as ignorant as a woman--begging your pardon again, Miss Heriot. He is a nice fellow, but thoroughly unsatisfactory; as unsettled as a man can be; a complete rover, here to-day and gone to-morrow. I like him very much myself. I don’t know any pleasanter companion; but that’s his character. Socially, of course, it doesn’t matter; but it’s a great pity for himself.” “No doubt about that,” said Mr. Charles; “a great pity. What are his means, now? That would be a kind of a way of judging.” “I do not see that we are the people who ought to judge him,” said Marjory, rising from the table; while little Milly, with all her golden locks on end, holding by her sister’s dress, and turning looks of fire and flame upon the calumniator, rose too, in a flush of childish fury. “Oh! how I would have liked to have done something to him!” cried Milly, as soon as they had got to the safe shelter of the drawing-room. “If I had been a man, I would have fought him, May! Our Mr. Fanshawe, that is good for everything! I hope Uncle Charles will never, never as long as I live, bring that man here again!”