"After you are married! has he asked you to marry him?" cried Rose. She pushed away her design with both her hands in the vehemence of her feelings, and regarded her sister with eyes which blazed, but which were totally different in their blazing from those which burned under Barbara's level eyebrows. It was too plain a question to have a plain answer. Barbara only lighted her candle in reply, and smiled and shook her head. "You don't suppose I am going to answer after your insulting ways," she said, taking up her candle; and she swept out of the room in her white dress with a sense of pleasure in leaving this grand point unsettled. To be sure, Mr Cavendish had not yet asked that important question; but then the future was all before them, and the way clear. As for Rose, she clenched her little fists with a gesture that would have been too forcible for any one who was not an artist, and a member of a family of artists. "To think she should be one of us, and not to know what honour means," said Rose; "and as for this man, he must be a cheat himself, or he would find her out." This was how Mr Cavendish's defection from Lucilla took place; and at the same time it is a satisfaction to know that the event was received by everybody very much as little Rose Lake received it. And as for Miss Marjoribanks, if Barbara could have had the malicious satisfaction of looking in at the window, she would have been mortified to find that right-minded young woman sleeping the sleep of the just and innocent, and enjoying repose as profound and agreeable as if there had been no Mr Cavendish in the world, not to speak of Carlingford;--which, to be sure, was a result to be greatly attributed to Lucilla's perfect health, and entire satisfaction with herself. _Chapter XV_ This event was of far too much importance in the limited world of Grange Lane to pass over without some of the many commentaries which were going on upon the subject coming to the ears of Miss Marjoribanks, who was the person principally concerned. As for the Doctor, as we have already said, he was so far lost to a sense of his paternal duties as to chuckle a little within himself over the accident that had happened to Lucilla. It had done her no harm, and Dr Marjoribanks permitted himself to regard the occurrence in a professional point of view, as supplying a little alterative which he could scarcely administer himself; for it is well known that physicians are seldom successful in the treatment of their own families. He was more jocose than usual at breakfast for some days following, and, on the morning of the next Thursday, asked if everybody was to come as usual, with a significance which did not escape the young mistress of the house. "You know best, papa," she said cheerfully, as she poured him out his coffee: "if there is anybody who is ill and can't come, it must be your fault--but I did not hear that any one was ill."