Marjory’s was not a heart of stone, and it pled with her, more strongly than did this intercessor. She had seen the girl only three or four times, and had spoken to her but twice; though that had been enough to rouse in her a vague but powerful sentiment, for which she felt there was no adequate foundation. Now, however, this sentiment rose into a certain passionate force; she dismissed her visitor with a vague promise to go some time or other; but the moment the woman was gone, the pleading voice within awoke with double force, and gave her no rest. It interfered with her inevitable duties; it made her silent and pre-occupied, unable to respond to her little sister’s constant questions, and the remarks of Mr. Charles, who chose to come home for luncheon upon that day of all others, and was full of the doings of the new ladies at Pitcomlie, whom somebody he had met had been telling him doleful stories about. Mr. Charles’s brow was puckered with anxiety, and his niece did not give him the sympathy he hoped for. “I do not know what is to come of the old house, or what I can do,” he cried. “No doubt I am joint guardian; but how I am to fight against these two young women, or keep them from having their way--it’s a position I never anticipated, never anticipated, May.” “No doubt.” She was thinking she heard the cry “bring back the leddy!” and Matilda and her sister had no interest for Marjory, even though they were turning upside down her father’s house. “For you see,” said Mr. Charles, with his perplexed look; “though I am joint guardian, so is she; and you may say what you please, May, when it comes to be judged between two people, and one of them a pretty young woman, there’s no tribunal yet invented that will hold the scales of justice altogether even. I might do the best for the boy and his inheritance; but she’s his mother, and has nature on her side. The claims of nature might not tell so much if she were not bonnie; but the two together are irresistible. I do not know if I have your attention--”