“Who else?” said Fred with indignation. But Janet made no reply. She turned her back upon him and went off along the terrace, always shaking her head, which was slightly palsied and had a faint nodding motion besides. Something in this confirmed movement which was comic, and the jealousy of his mother, which had always been a well-known feature in old Janet, tended to give a ludicrous character to her appeal. Instead of deepening the sadness of his thoughts, it lightened them with a curious sense of relief. It seemed to take away at once the gravity of the recollection of his father’s reference to her, and the painful suggestion in it which had caused Fred so much trouble, when old Janet thus displayed herself in an absurd rather than a tragical light. CHAPTER VI. Mr. Wedderburn entered very naturally into the charge of his friend’s affairs. He had been Dalyell’s counsellor already on many occasions in his life, and knew much about his concerns, the resources of the estate, and all the original sources of income which Dalyell had increased, yet fatally risked, by his speculations. No one was better fitted than he to apply the welcome aid of the insurance moneys to the relief of Yalton from all the encumbrances which the dead man’s other affairs had imported into his life. A man so familiar with the household and all its affairs, nobody could know so well as he how to guide the revenues of the household so as to afford their usual comforts to Mrs. Dalyell and the girls without injuring Fred’s interests, or forgetting the very near approach of the time when he should take the control into his own hands. It was evident that changes were inevitable then; either that Mrs. Dalyell should retire to a house of her own, or that she should remain as Fred’s housekeeper, with her authority contingent upon his plans, and liable to be destroyed whenever the young man should think of marriage--a position in which the faithful friend of the house was unwilling to contemplate the mistress of Yalton. It was not a thing that would have affected Mrs. Dalyell. It would not have occurred to her to think that the house was less hers by being Fred’s. But Mr. Wedderburn was jealous of her dignity, and it wounded a certain imaginative sense of fitness for which no one would have given the dry old lawyer credit--the notion that the woman whom he had so long admired and liked should be dependent on her boy’s caprice and whether it should please him or not to marry. The event which would make another change, so great, in her position, troubled him more than he could say. Was it not enough, he asked himself, that she should have had this shock to bear, and her life rent in two, that she should now have to yield all authority to Fred, and be dependent upon him for her home and dignity? The thought did not disturb Mrs. Dalyell, who felt it as natural to continue as before at the head of a house, which was no less hers