Before the summer days had begun to shorten, and by the time that Arthur Vavasour’s evident admiration for young Mrs. Beacham had begun to make his more cool and sensible younger brother seriously uneasy, the period--namely, the end of August--was fixed for the marriage of the heir with Miss Sophia Duberly, the only child of one of the richest _nobodies_ in the county. A fortnight previous to the epoch named, Arthur would, unless, as Horace facetiously remarked, anything happened to the contrary, attain the mature age of twenty-one. As regarded the latter event, Lady Millicent had continued to maintain a dogged and portentous silence. She was well aware that her children, the girls especially, had hoped and expected that Arthur’s “coming of age” would not pass over entirely without the “praise and honour due” to a rich man’s son so situated; and though the traditional ox need not be exactly roasted whole, nor gigantic bonfires lighted on the occasion, yet Lady Millicent was as well aware as if the county newspapers had not persistently proclaimed the fact that England expected her on this occasion to do her duty. “I do really believe she would hinder Atty coming of age at all if she could,” Kate said one day, when Horace had “run down” for an hour to brighten up his sisters, and see how things in general were going on. “Mamma does so hate any of us being jolly.” “And you call ‘coming of age’ ‘being jolly,’ eh, goosie? Learn then, O foolish child, that the event you speak of means ‘looking up,’ paying one’s own bills, being responsible for one’s own actions--being, in short, out of _nonage_, without the accruing of a grain of brains to oneself thereby.” “But I suppose that something will be done,” persisted Kate, who, in spite of her brother’s repeated assurances that a miracle would probably not be wrought in her behalf, still nursed the hope that “milady” would at last be brought to reason. “I cannot believe that the 14th of August will pass like every other dull stupid day. I thought there was always a dinner, and a ball, and speeches.” “And buttering up, and slithering down,” broke out Horace savagely; “toadying, flattering, and lies! Of all the occasions in life when that kind of thing is carried on, there’s nothing like the coming of age of an heir-apparent!” “I quite agree with you, my dear Horace,” said Lady Millicent, sailing in silently from behind a treacherous _portière_, and raising a painful doubt in her children’s mind as to the extent of her knowledge thus surreptitiously acquired of their opinions. “A great waste of words always, to say nothing of the whole proceeding being always in the worst possible taste.” “Of course! The idea of crying _Vive le roi!_ before the poor old king is dead! Simply monstrous, I call it. Arthur too quite agrees with me; and after all, what business has the county to trouble itself about the matter one way or the other?”