Jabez, who could keep very little to himself, had told this ghost story, with sundry reservations, to his sister, and she, finding the draft of a tender declaration in the pocket of a pair of trousers he had left out to be brushed, immediately put two and two together, like the clever woman that she was, and determined to tackle her brother at once. Miss Georgina Duck was a strong-minded, hard-featured damsel, who had passed sweet seventeen some thirty years ago. She was mistress of a house without being plagued with a husband. She managed her brother’s home, and her word was law. She ruled him, and she ruled the lodgers in the first floor, and she ruled the charwoman who came in to help occasionally, and she ruled the butcher and the baker and the milkman, and everybody in the neighbourhood who came within the circle of her magic influence. She even ruled the cats. No cats came into _her_ garden, or if by chance they did cross it _en route_ for the gardens beyond, it was always in fear and trembling. Before the eye of Georgina Duck the most daring Tom would quail, and it was wonderful how quickly the whole of the neighbouring feline colony learned to shun a conflict with Miss Duck. Now this was hardly the woman quietly to resign her sceptre after a long despotic reign just because her elderly idiot of a brother had taken a fancy to an old woman’s legacy. ‘A pretty thing, indeed,’ said Miss Duck to her bosom friend, Miss Jackson, from over the road, ‘for him to go making a fool of himself at his age! The house wouldn’t hold her and me long. I suppose I should be expected to turn out. Not me!’ The idea of Miss Duck turning out so shocked Miss Jackson that she fell upon her friend’s neck and wept. Miss Jackson always wept. Tears with her supplied the place of speech. ‘Don’t be a fool, ‘Lizer,’ said Miss Duck, harshly. ‘There’s nothing to cry about. He hasn’t done it yet. _And he isn’t going to!’’_ If Mr. Duck had been present he would have accepted his fate there and then, and resigned Mrs. Turvey without a struggle. Fortunately, he still believed that he could evade the watchful guardianship of Georgina, and did not allow his little plans to be disconcerted. CHAPTER VI. AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE. At the lodge-gates of an old-fashioned country mansion, which stands in a well-wooded park shut in among the Surrey hills, a young girl was waiting one winter night. Every now and then she would turn and glance towards the house, as though she expected some one to come from it. Twice she fancied she heard a footstep and stepped out into the shadow of the roadway, and twice she found her faney had deceived her.