‘You shut up, ’Liza, and don’t talk as if you believed in fortune-telling—not that I should mind a bit getting my fortune told by a right old woman, in a red cloak, with a pack of cards. It would be lovely. And, oh my! wouldn’t mother be down on me, if she found me out!’ cried ’Mily, in high glee at the bare idea of the servant girl’s escapade. ‘It is an instinct of self-preservation on the fellow’s part, and on Fan’s it is the old infatuation and the recent reaction working their worst together. There is no help for it,’ said Oliver to himself, slowly and sadly. Beyond the area of Copley Grange Farm every voice of every Stanhope was dumb on the announcement of Harry’s marriage. The members of the Stanhope family certainly agreed with Oliver, that it was useless to interpose from any hope of dealing effectually with the consummation of Harry’s descent in life, to which his friends had formerly been provoked into giving a reluctant consent. At last Agneta wrote to Fan, very prettily, within certain limits. Agneta was glad that her dear old Harry should be happy. She thanked Fan for making his happiness. She trusted that she and Fan would always remain friends. But there was not a word of Agneta’s coming down to Copley Grange Farm to grace the marriage; not a hint of any future visit; not a syllable of meeting Fan again in the whole course of their respective lives. Fan read the letter without any remark. As she read she grew still more colourless in her olive paleness, which ’Mily Polley called ‘whity-brownness,’ but there was also a more steadfast set of her well-cut mouth, a more indomitable expression in her brown eyes. She did not give Oliver the letter to read; indeed, the brother and sister were no longer on such terms as to volunteer an exchange of confidences. She only surrendered the dainty epistle to Harry at his special request. Harry reddened and bit his lip as he took in, at a couple of glances, the familiar writing on the page and a half of note-paper. ‘Dash it! I did not think Aggie could have been such a cold-hearted chit,’ he muttered; ‘I did think she was more of a lady than to be a stuck-up snob.’ ‘Never mind,’ said Fan, with determined magnanimity; ‘I dare say it is hard for her to have you stoop for a wife.’