‘Poor old uncle Geof!’ said the man on his trial, with an impulse of his native kindliness; ‘to think he should be gone, and to cut up well for us, after all! For at least this legacy, though it ain’t much,’ continued Harry with a mixture of earnestness and candour, condescension and defiance peculiar to him, ‘ain’t too little for some enjoyment, without Fan and the rest of you looking glum. Come on, Horry; we’ll pay all respect to the old boy and his tin, by drinking to his memory to begin with, and then we’ll do whatever else enters our heads, to drive dull care away. Nobody can reasonably expect two fellows who have succeeded to a small fortune—and the smaller it is the less self-denial is to be looked for—to abstain from a glorification or two. But we’ll save enough to make you a handsome present, Fan, never fear. As for Constable, he’s like the man in history, beyond being bought.’ Agneta wrote—to her brothers this time, to tell them of her approaching marriage, with the full approbation of her guardians, to Mr. Amyott of Copley Grange—of all men, the widower approaching middle age, the father of two or three girls, the biggest already higher than the writer’s elbow. ‘Aggie a stepmother! Why doesn’t she go in for being a grandmother at once?’ cried Harry, as his single derisive comment on an incident which, since it barely touched him, did not deserve more serious consideration. ‘Ah! she was always fond of Copley Grange,’ said Fan, with quick, womanly extenuation, as if it had been the manor-house and the squire that Agneta had known and prized. ‘But she is taking a great many duties and cares upon her at once, which seems a pity, when one thinks how many more must come in the course of nature,’ ended Fan in assumed matter-of-factness, and in the languor which had replaced her old fire. But she began again a moment afterwards. ‘It is not fair to herself and to what ought to have been her natural obligations.’ Fan spoke now with something of her former suppressed ardour and inextinguishable passion for justice; but tears of weakness gathered in her eyes at the same time. She was not thinking of Agneta’s future alone, but of the future of others with claims on their sister, which Fan, in the days of her strength, would have been the last to urge, and which Agneta appeared deliberately disqualifying herself from ever fulfilling. ‘Heaven help us! I think we are not very cordial in our congratulations,’ exclaimed Oliver impatiently. He was pricked by the troubled consciousness that the cares as well as the pleasures of this life—the cares which are not of our seeking and which certainly do not contribute to our ease and satisfaction, are in danger of choking the good seed of generous thoughts and magnanimous judgments. ‘Can’t we wish Miss Stanhope and Mr. Amyott joy, without spotting all the real or imaginary disadvantages in their connection, and collaring the couple with the double chains of fulfilled and neglected requirements?’