“Miss Fane, I want to talk to you about this dreadful certificate. What do you think about it? For my own part, I most certainly will never believe that Reginald was ever married to anyone but me. It is some excessively bad joke that he and I will be laughing over together before the end of the week. Don’t you think so?” “My dear, if you have fully made up your mind, why ask me?” returned Miss Fane coldly. “Because I have no one else to talk to about it. You are his aunt--his mother’s sister. You would not believe such a thing of him, I know.” Miss Fane drew in her lips and knitted faster and more fiercely than ever. Alice, kneeling beside her, softly laid her hand on her arm and said: “You know I have no mother to advise me, or think for me; and I am so dreadfully young, and foolish, even for my age. Don’t you think, if my mother were alive, she would say, ‘Trust your husband?’ In my heart I do sincerely trust him. Don’t you?” “Yes,” replied Miss Fane; and then, after a pause, added: “That is to say, as much as _any_ young man can be trusted. His mother was certainly my sister, but we were very little together, as I lived chiefly at my grandfather’s. She was a handsome headstrong girl. Reginald has his mother’s eyes and his mother’s temper, or I am much mistaken. You would not have found her very easy to get on with, had she been spared,” observed Miss Fane charitably; “but she died, poor thing, when she was two-and-twenty. My brother-in-law was inconsolable; he adored her, and spoiled her, and did the same for her son.” “Do not say that, Miss Fane. If Reginald had been spoiled he could never have grown up as he has done--so good, so honourable, so----” “Yes, yes,” interrupted Miss Fane irritably. “All brides of two or three months say the same.” “There are very few like Reginald, nevertheless,” said Alice warmly. “I know him, of course, better than anyone now.” “Or you think you do,” interrupted Miss Fane, “which comes to the same thing.” “I _know_ I do! I don’t believe he has a thought that I might not share; he is true, upright, unselfish. Self he never thinks of; I am his first thought in everything. He loves me far too dearly to bring any such dreadful grief near me as this certificate hints at. I will put all thoughts of it out of my head till he comes home. Don’t you think I am wise?” she asked earnestly. “Yes; in a certain sense you are; but if it is not cleared up you will be all the more unprepared to receive the shock. My motto is, ‘Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and take what comes.’ This is a very serious matter, and requires serious thought. I have been turning it over in my mind for the last hour. Shall I tell you what I think?” gazing solemnly over her glasses at Alice, who was still kneeling at her side. “Oh yes, of course. Please do,” she replied eagerly. “I think that you are by no means the first girl Reginald was in love with, or that was in love with him.”