Virginia stood gazing anxiously at the speaker. She longed to ask if he was quite sure that her future husband was sane; but such a question must appear too eccentric for her to venture upon it. Fortunately, the next words of the lawyer practically answered it. "And such a grasp of business! Such a fine, keen intelligence! He tells me that he runs his estate at a profit, has all these new intensive culture ideas, and plenty of capital to carry them out. A fine fortune, indeed! One wonders how it chances that such a man has remained so long a bachelor!" Mrs. Mynors bridled, but said nothing. Virginia absorbed the sense of the opinion just given with considerable relief. The information respecting Gaunt's scientific cultivation of his land interested her. Her own father, living on his hereditary acres, had been in like manner devoted to the soil. At Lissendean, however, the land had starved to supply the constantly increasing demands of the mistress of the house; and the shadow of the approaching, inevitable bankruptcy had paralysed all planning, and embittered the premature illness and death of a chivalrous and simple gentleman. The thought that this free life, of tramping over fields and through spinneys, of riding across one's own acres, and watching the response of the earth to the hand of man, might once more be hers, went far to reconcile the new Andromeda to her lot. The manner and appearance of her suitor had rather puzzled than hurt her. He had pleaded solitude and boorishness as a reason for his extraordinarily abrupt tactics. If he atoned for his surprising rudeness in the matter (for instance) of her mother's ring by being good to his wife, and allowing her to have Pansy to stay with her, then she might be so nearly happy that she need waste little regret upon her own action in shutting upon her youth the gate of dreams. Softly she stole from the room, leaving her mother still in talk with Mr. Askew, finding out all she could as to the extent of her son-in-law's means; and privately speculating as to how far it would be prudent to exceed the miserable allowance which he proposed to make her. Virginia went upstairs to Pansy's room to console the child for her disappointment in not having seen her future brother. Shyly the elder sister, when Gaunt was taking leave, had suggested a moment's visit to the little invalid. She had been curtly refused. He had barely time in which to catch his train to London. By way of comfort, Virgie now enlarged upon the big, beautiful garden at Omberleigh, wherein, of course, Pansy would ere long find herself installed. Eagerly the child noticed and remarked upon the beautiful ring which her sister wore. She had not previously seen it, and was naturally kept in ignorance of its somewhat humiliating history. "I wonder what else he will send you, Virgie," said the child eagerly. "I expect that before long lovely wedding presents will begin to come. What dress shall you buy to be married in, darling?"