"Thanks. Such delicious cake! Home-made, no doubt. We met Mr. Maurice first at Bex, and then in the mountains. A rather agreeable man; and clever too. He and Doris went no end of expeditions together. Girls do such odd things, you know, in these days. You and I, when we were girls, would no more have dreamt of going off for a day with a strange young man, than of flying to the moon. The one would have been as impossible as the other. But everything now is so different! Of course they were not strangers long. Very much the reverse, as you may imagine." Mrs. Stirling, having received Doris's little note, and having been impressed by it, woke up to the fact that there was method in this outpouring. She handed more cakes. "Thanks very much. I'm really ashamed—I am making quite a meal. And my appetite is generally so small—so precarious, you know. To tell the truth, I rather blamed myself for laxity, in allowing the two to be so much together—perhaps in trusting them too implicitly. Mine is a trustful nature, and one is so liable to be taken in. But pray count all this to be in the strictest confidence! You see—things really did go rather far. I quite thought something was coming of it. But even in modern days, the course of true love doesn't always run smooth." "This may be only the second volume of the novel. Perhaps a third will follow," cheerfully suggested Mrs. Stirling. "It may—of course. But something seems to have gone wrong. And when one sees Doris, one cannot help feeling very sorry for the poor girl. So very apparent—what she is feeling! But I ought not to have said so much. I—in a manner I almost promised! Only, you of course—being so intimate with them all—it seems as if you really ought to know. But unless you can assure me that it will go no farther, I must not say any more." "It sounds an interesting tale. I can undertake that it will not travel beyond my son and myself." Mrs. Brutt professed herself satisfied, and proceeded to pour forth the whole story—not to say, a good deal more than the whole. Mrs. Stirling listened with an air of placid detachment, smiling sympathetically. Whatever she felt for Hamilton's sake, she did not turn a hair; and Mrs. Brutt, who had meant her tidings to come as a blow, was disappointed. "Quite a nice little one-volume love-affair!" Mrs. Stirling remarked at the end. "It seems rather a pity, since he is such a pleasant young fellow, that he should not have her—even though he has not the sixteen quarterings!" "Very far from that. There is something most hazy about his family history—his father, more especially—putting aside the Wyldd Farm relationships. And besides—between ourselves—I imagine that her parents have other views for Doris." "Really! Are you sure? We are not too well off in this place for eligible men. Do, pray, tell me—who can it be?" Mrs. Brutt could have shaken her; and the temptation proved irresistible.