In the evening he went to town again, to find Mr. Yelverton. Mrs. Duff-Scott, when dinner was over, had a consultation with her cook, and made arrangements for a festive luncheon for the following day. The girls went upstairs again, and thither their adopted mother presently followed them, and they spent an hour together in Elizabeth's bedroom, absorbed in the sad but delightful business of overhauling her portmanteau. By this time they were able to discuss the situation with sobriety--a sobriety infused with much chastened emotion, to be sure, but still far removed from the ferment of hysterics. Patty, in particular, had a very bracing air about her. "Now I call this _life_," she said, flourishing open the skirt of one of Elizabeth's dresses to see if it was fit to be worn on a wedding journey; "I call this really _living_. One feels as if one's faculties were given for some purpose. After all, it is not necessary to go to Europe to see the world. It is not necessary to travel to gain experience and to have adventures. Is not this frock too shabby, Mrs. Duff-Scott--all things considered?" "Certainly," assented that lady, promptly. "Put in her new cashmere and the Indian silk, and throw away those old things now." "Go and get the Indian silk, Nelly. It is in the wardrobe. And don't hang over Elizabeth in that doleful manner, as if she were going to have her head cut off, like Lady Jane Grey. She is one of the happiest women on the face of the earth--or, if she isn't, she ought to be--with such a prospect before her. Think of it! It is enough to make one gnash one's teeth with envy." "Let us hope she will indeed realise her prospects," said Mrs. Duff-Scott, feeling called upon to reprove and moderate the pagan spirit that breathed in Patty's words. "Let us hope she will be as happy in the future as she is now." "Oh, she will--she will! Let us hope she will have enough troubles to keep her from being _too_ happy--too happy to last," said the girl audaciously; "that is the danger she will want preserving from." "You may say what you like, but it is a rash venture," persisted the matron, shaking her head. "She has known him but for such a _very_ short time. Really, I feel that I am much to blame to let her run into it like this--with so little knowledge of what she is undertaking. And he _has_ a difficult temperament, Elizabeth. There is no denying it--good and nice as he is, he is terribly obstinate about getting his own way. And if he is so _now_, what will he be, do you suppose, presently?" Patty, sitting on her heels on the floor, with her sister's clothes spread around her, looked up and laughed. "Ah! that is one safeguard against too much happiness, perhaps. I do think, with Mrs. Duff-Scott, that you have met your master, my dear." "I don't think it," replied Elizabeth, serenely. "I know I have." "And you are quite content to be mastered?" "Yes--by him."