"With plenty to be extravagant upon," said Miss Carlaw, with something of a return of her old manner. "Well, brother Bob, I suppose you'll go home to-night in triumph; you'll go home and laugh because an old fool has been blind in a double sense; because she's been fooled as thousands of women have been fooled before, eh? Oh, you need have no mercy; go and tell all your friends, every one who knows you, tell all the world that I have warmed something in my bosom until at last it has stung me. Tell 'em all." "Indeed, my dear sister," said Mr. Carlaw, "you do me a grave injustice. You spoke just now, not without emotion, of our childish years; my heart goes out to you to-night more than it has ever done. I may say that, having seen much of men and women in this queer world of ours, I feared something of this from the beginning; I felt that the boy had not that strength of character, if I may so term it, necessary to take his place with any dignity in an exalted sphere. Humbly he might have done well; the best of us are likely to have our heads turned." "There, that will do; I'm quite capable of abusing him myself, if necessary, without your help. I suppose I ought to thank you for what you've told me to-night, but I'm afraid I can't quite do that. I wish, in my heart of hearts, I might have died five minutes before you came in, for then his kiss was warm upon my old cheek, and I--God help me!--I believed in him. There, don't speak to me. Go away, please; I want to be alone." Mr. Robert Carlaw quietly took his way out of the room and out of the house. As he walked home he looked up at the night sky and smiled softly to himself, and felt that the world was good and that Providence had been specially kind to him. "Women are strange creatures," he muttered to himself, "and when they've been upset or have had something rudely torn away from them they do remarkable things. Years ago, my dear Charlotte, you rejected my offspring and put Master Comethup Willis in his place. I may be wrong, but I think now, with the swing of the pendulum, it is ten thousand chances to one that you will restore Brian to your favour; and then our begging days are over, and all our fortunes will be made. And I shall have made them." CHAPTER XXV. THE FALL OF PRINCE CHARMING. Miss Carlaw stood for a long time in the same attitude after her brother had left her; the whole hideous thing had come upon her so unexpectedly and with such force that she was like one stunned. She began presently to pace about the room, moaning once or twice to herself as she walked, and then again stopping suddenly with a new light on her face and a smile about her lips. But those latter moments were rare and fleeting; they came to her only when she felt for an instant that the story she had heard was a hideous invention, and that her faith in Comethup might still remain unshaken.