“It is you,” said Colonel Piercey, “who are imputing intentions now. I had no such idea. I think my business as next-of-kin is to defend the poor fellow. But the woman; that is a different thing.” “The woman is his wife. I don’t want to assume any unnatural impartiality. But, after all, is he likely ever to have had a better wife? I believe she will be an excellent wife to Gervase. One of his own class, I hope, would not have married him.” “Why do you say, ‘I hope?’ Is that not worse than anything that could be said?” “Perhaps,” said Margaret. “Poor Gervase is not an idiot, but neither is he just like other people. And a girl might have been driven into it, and then might have found----” She added, with a little shiver, “It is the best thing that could have happened for him to marry Patty. I hate it, of course. How could I do otherwise? But as far as he himself is concerned----” “You are a great philosopher, Cousin Meg.” “Do you think so?” Half resentful as she was, and not more than half satisfied with Colonel Piercey’s explanations, he was yet the only person in the world to whom she could speak with freedom; and it was a relief to her. “She will look after Uncle Giles’ comfort, and he will get to like her,” she continued. “She will rule the household with a rod of iron.” Margaret laughed, though her face settled down the next moment into a settled gravity. “They will have no society, but they will not want it. She will keep them amused. Perhaps it is the best thing that could have happened,” she said. “And you? and the boy?” He stopped and looked at her standing among the roses, which were very luxuriant in the last climax of maturity, full blown, shedding their leaves, just about to topple over from that height of life into the beginning of decay. Margaret had no trace of decay about her, but she, too, was in the full height of life, the fulfilment of promise, standing at the _mezzo di cammin_, and full of all capabilities. She did not look up at him, but answered with a half-smile,-- “I--and the boy? We are not destitute. Perhaps it will be better for us both to set out together, and live our own life.” “You are not destitute? I hope you will pardon me. After what you think my conduct has been, you may say I have no right----” Margaret smiled in spite of herself. “But you say that your conduct has been--not what I thought.” “Yes, yes, that is so: I have not been such a fool. Cousin Meg, we were great friends in the old days.” “Not such very great friends--no more than girls and boys are when they are not specially attached to each other.” He thought that she intended to give him a little prick with one of those thorns which the matured rose still keeps upon its stalk; and he felt the prick, which, being still more mature than she, he ought not to have done. “I think it was a little more than that,” he said, in a slight tone of pique; “but anyhow--we are cousins.” “Very distant cousins.”