"Oh, to-day of course! Sometimes everybody comes all together, and then I just don't know what to do. I feel all sat upon and 'scrushed,'" said Mrs. Kennedy, in her unconventional language, while she looked affectionately at Mabel with kind soft eyes. "The only thing to do, don't you know, is to let them have it out. Everybody has always got plenty to say. But such a crowd won't come to-day, I don't think. It's too fine. Must you go, really? Well, good-bye, and mind you tell your father that he really ought to look after that poor little baronet, and keep him from being turned into a molly. Oh, I'm forgetting—there's a note for him from my husband. Couldn't you take it? Thomas!" cried Mrs. Kennedy, opening the door, to find herself face to face with Miss Devereux. Mrs. Kennedy fell back a step. "Oh, how do you do? I'm so glad it is you—not a man. Just think if it had been a man!" she said frankly. "Do pray come in. I'm only calling my husband to—" Mr. Kennedy appeared through an opposite door. He was undersized, plain-featured, and shy-mannered, with anxious pale-tinted eyes which saw little before them, by reason of the mental eyes being bent habitually inward. When his glance fell upon Miss Devereux, he put out one hand, with a gradual smile, deprecating in kind. "Mabel is just going home, dear. Would you like to send any message to Dr. Ingram?" "I—yes, I have a note," said Mr. Kennedy. He did not at once go in search of it, but followed Miss Devereux into the drawing-room, and stood looking at her with his mild blank goodness of expression. Nobody of any penetration could see Mr. Kennedy, and not recognise the goodness written in his face. "Dear man! He is half in heaven already!" Some of his more attached friends declared; though if there were truth in the words, it remains an uncontrovertible fact that to be "half in heaven already," does not obviate a considerable amount of earthliness about the half still upon earth. The earthliness takes different forms in different cases. "I hope your nephew is well this summer—growing stronger?" said Mr. Kennedy. "Thank you, dear Cyril is fairly well, but I have to be very careful of him," sighed Sybella. She did not look so markedly older for her seven additional years as might have been expected, but she had gained in a certain conscious importance, in an air of responsibility. She had learned by this time to appreciate her own position, and even to act for herself. Still—Sybella was Sybella.