"It is a great risk, but we must run it," said Sir Thomas; and so the matter was settled. Then he explained to them that he intended to go himself to Southampton to receive his niece, and that he would bring her direct from that port to her new home. Patience offered to accompany him on the journey, but this he declined as unnecessary. Everything was decided between them by eleven o'clock,--even to the room which Mary Bonner should occupy, and then the girls left their father, knowing well that he would not go to bed for the next four hours. He would sleep in his chair for the next two hours, and would then wander about, or read, or perhaps sit and think of this added care till the night would be half over. Nor did the two sisters go to bed at once. This new arrangement, so important to their father, was certainly of more importance to them. He, no doubt, would still occupy his chambers, would still live practically alone in London, though he was in theory the presiding genius of the household at Fulham; but they must take to themselves a new sister; and they both knew, in spite of Clarissa's enthusiasm, that it might be that the new sister would be one whom they could not love. "I don't remember that I ever heard a word about her," said Clarissa. "I have been told that she is pretty. I do remember that," said Patience. "How old is she? Younger than we, I suppose?" Now Clarissa Underwood at this time was one-and-twenty, and Patience was nearly two years her senior. "Oh, yes;--about nineteen, I should say. I think I have been told that there were four or five older than Mary, who all died. Is it not strange and terrible,--to be left alone, the last of a large family, with not a relation whom one has ever seen?" "Poor dear girl!" "If she wrote the letter herself," continued Patience, "I think she must be clever." "I am sure I could not have written a letter at all in such a position," said Clarissa. And so they sat, almost as late as their father, discussing the probable character and appearance of this new relation, and the chance of their being able to love her with all their hearts. There was the necessity for an immediate small sacrifice, but as to that there was no difficulty. Hitherto the two sisters had occupied separate bedrooms, but now, as one chamber must be given up to the stranger, it would be necessary that they should be together. But there are sacrifices which entail so little pain that the pleasant feeling of sacrificial devotion much more than atones for the consequences.