"All right. I'll go and find the major. Thank Heaven, he's no gossip, and I think he is too real a friend of the Miss Kings to care what he hears any more than I do." But Mr. Yelverton got anxious about this point after it occurred to him, and went off thoughtfully to the club, congratulating himself that, thanks to his sweetheart's reasonableness, he was in a position which gave him the privilege of protecting them should the issue of this mysterious business leave them in need of protection. At the club he found the major, talking desultory politics with other ex-guardians of the State now shelved in luxurious irresponsibility with him; and the little man was quite ready to obey his friend's summons to attend the family council. "The Miss Kings are back," said Mr. Yelverton, "and old Brion, the lawyer, is with them, and there are some important matters to be talked over this afternoon, and you must come and hear." The major said that he was at the Miss Kings' service, and got his hat. He asked no questions as he passed through the lobby and down the steps to Mr. Yelverton's cab, which waited in the street. In his own mind he concluded that Elizabeth's engagement had "come off," and this legal consultation had some more or less direct reference to settlements, and the relations of the bride-elect's sisters to her new lot in life. What chiefly occupied his thoughts was the fear that he was going to be asked to give up Patty and Eleanor, and all the way from the club to his house he was wondering how far his and his wife's rights in them extended, and how far his energetic better half might be relied upon to defend and maintain them. At the house they found that Mr. Brion had already arrived, and that Mrs. Duff-Scott was assembling her party in the library, as being an appropriate place for the discussion of business in which men were so largely concerned. It was a spacious, pleasant room; the books ranging all round from the floor to about a third of the way up the wall, like a big dado; the top shelf supporting bric-à-brac of a stately and substantial order, and the deep red walls, which had a Pompeian frieze that was one of the artistic features of the house, bearing those pictures in oils which were the major's special pride as a connoisseur and man of family, and which held their permanent place of honour irrespective of the waves of fashion that ebbed and flowed around them. There was a Turkey carpet on the polished floor, and soft, thick oriental stuffs on the chairs and sofas and in the drapery of the wide bow-window--stuffs of dim but richly-coloured silk and wool, with tints of gold thread where the light fell. There was a many-drawered and amply-furnished writing table in that bow-window, the most comfortable and handy elbow tables by the hearth, and another and substantial one for general use in the centre of the floor. And altogether it was a pleasant place both to use and to