The dowager took her nephew's departure very deeply to heart; or it may be rather that she had set her heart on a suite of spacious apartments in Tyburnia, and was by no means disposed to return to Dorset Square. She questioned Cecil very sharply about Hector's proceedings, and succeeded in driving that young lady into a conversational corner, whence it was impossible to emerge without a revelation of the truth. "You tell me you think he's engaged," said the dowager, impatiently, after forcing Cecil to admit so much. "And why do you think he's engaged? Did he tell you so?" "He gave me to understand as much." "And engaged to whom, pray?" "A young lady in India." "A young lady in India. Is that all you know about her?" "Yes indeed, auntie." "A nice designing thing, I dare say, and a nobody into the bargain, or of course he'd have told you who she was," cried Mrs. MacClaverhouse indignantly. "A stuck-up creature, who will contrive to keep her husband at a distance from his relations, no doubt, in order that she may surround him with a pack of harpies of her own kith and kin. And to think that my boy should never have so much as asked my advice before he threw himself away! If you knew how I had built upon you and Hector making a match of it, Cecil, you'd sympathise with my disappointment a little, instead of sitting looking at me in that provokingly placid way of yours. I could have ended my days happily under Hector's roof: I hoped he would have been glad to give his poor old aunt a home; and I don't think you'd have refused me a shelter in my old age--eh, Cecil?" "Oh, auntie! auntie!" Mrs. MacClaverhouse had no need to complain of want of sympathy this time, for Cecil suddenly fell upon her knees, and buried her face in her aunt's ample silken skirts, sobbing passionately. The thought of what might have been was so very bitter; and every word the dowager uttered sent the arrow deeper into the wounded heart. "Oh, auntie!" she cried, "never speak to me about him again. Oh, pray, pray, do not speak of him again! I love him so dearly, so dearly, so dearly!" It was the first and last passionate cry of Cecil Chudleigh's heart, and it quite melted the dowager; but there was a touch of sternness mingled with her emotion. "I hope that designing minx will live to repent her artfulness," she said, spitefully; for it is the peculiar attribute of a woman to empty the vials of her wrath on the passive and unconscious maiden for whose sake her plans have been frustrated, rather than on the active masculine offender who has frustrated them.