Horace, thus appealed to, shook his head ominously. “I am as much in the dark as you can be,” was his unsatisfactory exordium. “Milady will be long enough before she either chooses confidants from among her children, or holds a _conseil de famille_ as to their individual hopes and wishes. In the mean time,” he added, stretching himself wearily, “what a bore this life is! I declare I would rather break stones upon the road than go on as we do at Gillingham. No creature except the clergyman and the London lawyer ever asked to the house, and my mother so awfully serious and gloomy! I declare, since the day when I was supposed to have finished my education, and when old Collins took his final leave with a handsome present of my father’s photograph as a testimony of my lady’s regard and esteem, I have never once enjoyed the unpurchasable luxury of a laugh. The best chance to get one is to spend an hour with Thady Nolan in the stables. He’s an importation since your time, Arthur, and I assure you, from personal experience, that you would find his society quite a resource. He is full of genuine Irish humour--quite a character in his way--and never, by any chance, takes liberties.” “I am glad,” Arthur said, “that my mother hasn’t reduced the stable establishment to quite the same miserable footing as everything else about this miserable place. Individually, it doesn’t so much signify to me; not personally, I mean. When a man is going to be married--” “Then it is true? O, Atty!” exclaimed Kate, and her eyes filled with tears, for she loved that prodigal and _tant soit peu_ unprincipled brother, of whose faults she knew so little, very dearly, and the idea of his marriage was, in some undefinable way, a blow to her. “_True!_ Of course it is. What was there besides for me to do? There was that season in London, two years ago now--how time does fly!--when you were all living so quietly in the country here, and when I--but there’s no earthly use in going over it all again. All I ask of you is, whether you, Kate, or you, Horace, or anyone that knows us both, would suspect me of marrying Sophy Duberly, unless--unless I couldn’t help myself?” “I can’t see that exactly,” Horace said. “She’s a very fine-looking girl, and always jolly, with plenty to say for herself. I only wish that I had the good fortune to make an impression on just such another. I like your talking like a victim, Arthur! Heiresses to twenty thousand a year are not as plenty as blackberries, and Sophy Duberlys don’t grow on every hedge, to be had for the picking.”