"I wonder what you'll do in future?" resumed Charlotte, looking at her sister. "You can't expect to find a home with me, you know. It would be entirely unreasonable. And you can't expect to marry, for I don't think you'd be likely to get anyone to have you. If----" The exceedingly vivid blush that overspread the younger sister's cheek, the wondrous look of intelligence in the raised eyes, brought Charlotte's polite speech to a summary conclusion. "What's the matter?" she asked. "Charlotte, if you would let me tell you," was the whispered answer. "Papa is dead, and mamma is dead, and there is no one left but you; and I suppose I _ought_ to tell you. I have promised to marry David." "Promised----what?" repeated Charlotte, in an access of consternation. "To marry David Dundyke. Not yet, of course; not for a long while, I dare say. When he shall be earning enough to keep a wife." For once speech failed Charlotte Travice, and she sat gazing at her sister. Her equanimity had received several shocks that evening; but none had been like this. She had seen but little of this David Dundyke; but, a vision of remembrance rose before her of an inferior, common young man, carrying coal-scuttles upstairs in his shirt-sleeves, who could not speak a word grammatically. "Are you really mad, Betsey?" "I feared you would not like it, Charlotte; and I know I can't expect to be as you are. But we shall be more than a hundred miles apart, so that it need not annoy you." Betsey had unconsciously put the matter in the right light. It was not because Mr. Dundyke was unfit to be Betsey's husband, but because he was unfit to be her brother-in-law, that the matter so grated on the ear of Charlotte. "I cannot expect much better, Charlotte; I have not been educated as you have. Perhaps if I had been----" "But the man is utterly beneath you!" burst forth Charlotte. "He is a common man. He used--if I am not mistaken--to black the boots and shoes for the house at night, and carry up the coal before he went out in the morning!" "But not as a servant, Charlotte; only to save work for his mother. Just as I helped with the rooms and waited, you know. He does it all still. They were very respectable once; but Mr. Dundyke died, and she had to struggle on, and she took this house in Upper Stamford-street. You have heard her tell mamma of it many a time." "You _can't_ think of marrying him, Betsey? You are something of a lady, at any rate; and he----cannot so much as speak like a Christian." "He is very steady and industrious; he will be sure to get on," murmured Betsey. "Some of the clerks in the house he is in get a great deal of money." "What house is it?" snapped Charlotte, beginning to feel cross again. "A public-house?--an eating-house?" "It is a tea-house," said Betsey, mildly. "They are large wholesale tea-dealers; whole shiploads of tea come consigned to them from China. He went into it first of all as errand-boy, and----"