Elizabeth scoffed at the idea. "Is it likely?" she asked. "Why, the creature's a diplomatist. There's small scope for diplomatic talents in the South Side of Glasgow, or 'out West' either." "But why should he want to come here?" "He _doesn't_, but my demented aunt--bless her kind heart!--adores him, and she adores us, and it has always been her dream that we should meet and be friends; but he was always away in Persia or somewhere, and we never met. But now he is home, and he couldn't refuse Aunt Alice--she is all the mother he ever knew and has been an angel to him--and I dare say he is quite good-hearted, though I can't stand the type." "Well, well," said Mr. Seton, by way of closing the subject, and he went over to the window to take a look at the world before settling down to his sermon. "Run away now, like a good girl. Dear me! what a beautiful blue sky for November!" "Tut, tut," said Elizabeth, "who can think of blue skies in this crisis! Father, have you thought of the question of _drinks_?" "Eh?" "Mr. Townshend will want wine--much wine--and how is the desire to be met in this Apollinaris household?" "He'll do without it," said Mr. Seton placidly. "I foresee the young man will be a reformed character before he leaves us;" and he lifted Launcelot from its seat on the blotter, and sat down happily to his sermon. Elizabeth shook her head at her provokingly calm parent, and picking up the kitten, she walked to the door. "Write a specially good sermon this week," she advised. "Remember Mr. Arthur Townshend will be a listener," and closed the door behind her before her father could think of a dignified retort. Mrs. Henry Beauchamp, the "Aunt Alice" who had dropped the bombshell in to the Seton household, was the only sister of Elizabeth's dead mother. A widow and childless, she would have liked to adopt the whole Seton family, Mr. Seton included, had it been possible. She lived most of the year in London in her house in Portland Place, and in summer she joined the Setons in the South of Scotland. Arthur Townshend was her husband's nephew. As he had lived much abroad, none of the Setons had met him; but now he was home, and Mrs. Beauchamp having failed in her attempt to persuade Elizabeth to join them in Switzerland, suggested he should pay a visit to Glasgow. Elizabeth was seriously perturbed. Arthur Townshend had always been a sort of veiled prophet to her, an awe-inspiring person for whom people put their best foot foremost, so to speak. Unconsciously her aunt had given her the impression of a young man particular about trifles--"ill to saddle," as Marget would put it. And she had heard so much about his looks, his abilities, his brilliant prospects, that she had always felt a vague antipathy to the youth. To meet this paragon at Portland Place would have been ordeal enough, but to have him thrust upon her as a guest, to have to feed him and entertain him for a week, her imagination boggled at it.