"Not since you arranged that meeting at your house," Ruth told me, "but he is due here to-night." She persists in speaking of people as though they were ships! The Hull strain coming out! "That is why I invited you all--Culroyd and Hilda are coming; and Spenworth and his wife--; I wanted you all to meet him. Or rather Phyllida did. She has been very mysterious, but there seems to be no doubt now..." "They are going to be married?," I interrupted. "Nothing has been said about it--_yet_," answered Ruth. I know you will not misunderstand me, still less make mischief, if I tell you that I heaved a _sigh_ of relief. Fond as I am of Phyllida, she would not have made a very suitable wife for Will, though it is essential for him to marry some one with a _little_ money and I have felt lately that, if he could marry _any one_, it would put an end to this persecution from the girl who is trying to blackmail him... At the same time it seemed a little strange for Phyllida to be summoning the entire family, when, so far as I could make out, Hilary had not said a _word_... "So you are expecting Colonel Butler," I said to her at tea. "He's coming to-day," she answered rather brusquely. "I thought he might have been here by now... _Well_, Aunt Ann, was I wise to wait? You told me to go right away and forget him; you always said you wanted to turn my thoughts." Do you know, for a dreadful moment I fancied that she was trying to reopen her insane vendetta... When she circulated those truly wicked stories about me... "Dear Phyllida," I said, "did I ever try to shake your faith in him? No one, not even you, has a greater admiration or regard for Colonel Butler; he has done me more than one inestimable service, and I think he would be the first to admit that he owes something to my friendship and advice. Ask him, dear child! I have nothing to fear from his testimony; but there is a right way and a wrong way in most things, and he will tell you that, on my advice, he chose the right. If I urged your father to send you away, if I tried to the best of my poor abilities to distract your thoughts, it was because I could not bear to see my own niece, my own brother's child, the picture of misery that you were." "Well, you'd look miserable," said Phyllida, "if the one person you cared for had been set against you and if everybody said you'd tried to capture him and he'd run away."