But, alas! the question of where the Duke was puzzled them both. Grosvenor Square; Billings Castle, ----shire; Hungerford Place, in the West Riding; Cooling, N.B.; Caerpylcher, North Wales. As his wife read them out one after another, with a little hesitation about the pronunciation, the Rector wrung his hands. The consultation which the anxious pair held on the subject ran on to the very limits of the post-hour, and would take too long to record. Now that it had come to this, Mrs Marston was inclined to hold her husband back. “After all, if it was a real attachment,” she said, between the moments of discussing whether it was in his seat in Scotland, or in Wales, or at his chief and most ducal of residences that a duke in November was likely to be. “After all, it might be really for her happiness--and what a dreadful shock for them, poor things, if they came to be married, thinking they had settled everything so nicely, and walked into the arms of her father!” Her heart melted more and more as she thought of it. No doubt, poor girl, she had been deprived early of a mother’s care; and, on the other hand, at twenty-eight a girl ought to know her own mind. She could not be expected to give in to her father for ever. And if it should be that this was a real attachment, and the poor young lady’s happiness was concerned---- The Rector made short work of these arguments. He pooh-poohed the real attachment in a way which made Mrs Marston angry. What could she know of poverty? he asked; and how was a duke’s daughter to scramble for herself in the world? As for love, it was great nonsense in most cases. The French system was just as good as the English. People got to like each other by living together, and by having the same tastes and habits. How could a fiddler or a tutor have the same habits as Lady Jane, “or Lady Angela, if you like it better?” He went on, as Mrs Marston said, like this, till she could have boxed his ears for him. And the fact was that he had to pay an extra penny on each of his letters to get them off by the post; for he wrote several letters--to Billings, to Hungerford, and to Grosvenor Square. Scotland and Wales were hopeless; there was no chance whatever that from either of these places his Grace could arrive in time. Indeed, it would be something very like a miracle if he arrived now. But the Rector felt that he had done his duty, which is always a consolation. He retired to rest late and full of excitement, feeling that no one could tell what the morrow might bring forth--a sentiment, no doubt, which is always true, but which commends itself more to the mind in a season when out-of-the-way events are likely. Mrs Marston had been a little cool towards him all the evening, resenting much that he had said. But it was not till all modes of communicating with the outer world were hopeless that she took her revenge and planted a thorn in his pillow. “If you had not been so disagreeable,” she said, “I would have