"Oh! I'm all right," replied the girl. "It's hot, and--and things are tiresome. They generally are at the end of the season, aren't they?" She drifted easily, rather aimlessly, out of the room. Like everything else in the house she was costly and refined; pretty in herself but without any individuality. For the rest, blonde and graceful, with a faintly discontented droop of the mouth, and large, full, china-blue eyes. Mr. Woodward watched her retreat furtively till the door closed behind her, then laid down his paper and addressed his wife with the air of a man who attends strictly to business. That was, in fact, his attitude towards his daughter at all times. He did not, he said, understand girls, but he did his duty by them. "I heard from Macleod this morning, my dear." Mrs. Woodward went on crumbling bread gently, and there was a pause. "Well, what does he say?" "That the house will be ready for visitors by the 8th of next month, and that it will give him great pleasure to welcome us as soon after that date as we can manage." "Nothing more?" "Only the old story; that he is most anxious for our consent in order that he may speak definitely. There, read it yourself, a sensible, gentlemanly letter. I really don't think she could do better." His tone was precisely what it would have been had he been recommending the purchase of debenture stock in a safe concern. "Then I suppose we may consider it settled; I mean, if Alice likes the place." "Just so; but I'm told it is charming; there is a man--in hooks-and-eyes, by the way--who has the moor next it. I met him at the Kitcheners' dinner. He said it only wanted money, and she will bring that. Besides, the man himself is all that can be desired, even by a girl." Mrs. Woodward nodded her head. "Yes, that is such a comfort, and Lady George is so nice. Alice is quite fond of her, which is a great point with a sister-in-law. In fact, everything seems most satisfactory." She paused a moment, and a faint shade of doubt showed on her face. "Only, of course, there is Jack." "Jack! heaven and earth, Sophia! what has Jack to do with it?" "Nothing, of course, only you know, or at any rate you might have seen that he--well, that he may object." Mr. Woodward's face passed from sheer amazement to that peculiar expression of virtuous indignation which so many English fathers reserve for those who, without a nomination, have the temerity to admire their daughters. "Jack! that boy Jack?" "He is older than Alice, my dear," put in his wife, with meek obstinacy. She, on the contrary, was smiling, for, no matter how ineligible the victim, a scalp is always a scalp to a mother; and Jack was not ineligible. On the contrary, he was the head of the soap-boiling business, now that her husband had received a consideration for his interest, and retired into the more genteel trade of blowing soap bubbles on 'Change.