“Oh, don’t talk to me!” cried Letitia--and what answer could be made to that? Altogether Greenpark was on that evening a melancholy house. Such questions cannot remain long in any doubt, and before the summer was at all advanced Mrs. Parke was compelled to give full evidence to the terrible truth. Needless to say that in the bottom of her heart she had been certain of it all along, though she held out so stoutly and would not acknowledge it to be true. But when it became known that Mrs. Hill and Agnes had arrived at the Park for a long visit, Mrs. John had a paroxysm of almost frenzy which for a day or two kept her to her bed, where she lay devouring her soul with imaginations of what was happening. Imaginations! Did she not know as well as if she had seen them what was going on? Mrs. Hill, oh with what beaming of pleasure on her face, bustling about, putting everybody right. Agnes, like another Mary, full of importance, too. The family from the vicarage altogether at the head of affairs, regulating everything, occupying the whole place, scarcely leaving room enough in his own house for poor old Frogmore, the old fool, the old ass, who had brought all this upon his family. Letitia raged within herself with internal wars and wails of wrath and anguish, like a wild beast, for three days; and then she got up and announced her intention of paying a visit to the Park. “It’s only right that I should go and ask for her!” she said, with a curl of her lip over her teeth, which made this English lady look like a hyena. “For goodness sake, Letitia, mind what you’re about. Don’t go and betray yourself,” said her husband in alarm. “Oh, you may leave me to take care of that,” she said. She arrived quite suddenly and unexpectedly, without a maid even, with a new travelling bag. “I felt that I must see dear Mary once more before---- At her age one always feels a little nervous for an affair of this kind,” she said sympathetically to Lord Frogmore, whose radiant countenance naturally clouded over at this remark. “I can go home to-night if there’s no room for me,” she added, “though I brought a bag, you see, in case I should stay.” “There must always be room for my brother John’s wife in any circumstances,” said the polite old lord, but he did not lead the way into the inner sanctuary until he had carried the news of this unexpected arrival. “Mrs. John Parke, my dear,” he said, “is so terribly anxious about you, Mary, that she has come all this way to know how you are.” “Oh, Letitia!” cried Mary, and “Tisch!” cried Agnes, in equal consternation. They looked at each other and grew pale. “Let me go down and speak to her. She will frighten Mary out of her wits if she comes upstairs.” “Oh, no,” said Mary faintly, “she must come in. Oh, Frogmore, I can’t blame her, when I think of those poor children. Perhaps she will feel a little more for me--now----” “Feel for you! You are the happiest woman I know,” said Agnes, indignant at her sister’s weakness.