"It is very seldom," replies Mrs. Blessington, shaking her head slowly to and fro, "that a young man shows the sense St. John Gerard has done in coming into his parents' views for him: in the present day they are mostly so headstrong and resolute to pick and choose for themselves, which generally ends in their selecting some worthless person utterly unsuited to their rank and fortune." "How long have you been engaged?" asks Esther, presently, framing her words with as much difficulty as though they had been spoken in some little-known foreign tongue. Worse to her than the loss of St. John is the consciousness that that loss is written in despair's grey colours on her faded face, right under her rival's victorious eyes. "How long? I really forget," answers Constance, with affected carelessness. "Oh, no! By-the-by, I recollect; it was almost immediately after you left Felton. I daresay" (with a smile) "that you were among the ranks of the prophets; lookers-on proverbially see most of the game." "Indeed--no!" cries the girl, with a passionate disclaimer, the agony of loss made sharper by the humiliation of defeat. "Nothing ever struck me as more unlikely!" "Indeed! And why, may I ask?" The skein is finished; Esther lifts one hand to her face, and feels a slight relief in the partial shade. "Why, pray?" with a slightly sharpened accent. "Because--because," she answers, in confusion, "you had been brought up together from children; because Mr. Gerard's manner seemed so much more like a brother's than a--a--lover's." The word so applied half chokes her. "We dislike public demonstrations of affection, both of us," rejoins the other, coldly displeased; "we leave those to servants and _savages_." A footman enters with tea in handleless red dragon cups, costly as age, brittleness, and ingenious ugliness can make them. Esther leans back in her chair, idle, staring vacantly at the pane, blurred with big rain-drops. After a pause, "You have not congratulated me, Miss Craven," Constance says, sipping her tea delicately; her madonna smile relaxing the severely correct lines of her Greek mouth. Esther gives a great start. "I? Oh, I beg your pardon! I--I forgot; I--I--I congratulate you!" "I was just going to write and tell you the news," says Constance, graciously--"I thought it might interest you, as you had been with us so lately, and seen the whole thing going on--when we heard of your brother's sudden death." Esther rises abruptly, and walks to the window, with that painful hatred in her heart towards Miss Blessington that we feel towards those who lightly name our sacred dead to us. "Was he your _only_ brother, my dear?" inquires Mrs. Blessington, with languid interest. "Yes." "Dear--dear! Very sad--very sad! And what did he die of? Consumption?" "No--diphtheria."