"Mamma is poorly. She needs some one by to fetch her smelling-bottle and keep her company when other people go away." She said it with much sobriety and demureness of manner, but the act of saying appeared to dissolve the little which remained of her self-restraint. She bent forward and took Rose's hand, adding in an undertone, "She knows. She has been told about the island. She is coming between us. Wants to break off everything. But she can't! I will not give him up. I will have nothing to say to any one else. Oh Rose! what am I to do? I cannot live if I do not see him sometimes. What shall I do?" Rose's eyes were roving far away, as were her thoughts; she was looking over Margaret's head, as Margaret leant forward and whispered. By a distant doorway stood a group of men, and her eyes turned dreamily and of themselves in that direction. The group parted to let two ladies enter, an elder and a younger one. The latter addressed a gentleman in passing, and carried him away between herself and her friend from his fellow-loungers. Rose coloured and started, then, meeting Margaret's look of surprise, she controlled herself-- "Forgive me, Margaret. My thoughts were wool-gathering; I scarcely caught your words." Margaret repeated her words without surprise. She had observed how absent-minded Rose had grown, her varying moods, her starts and flushings, and sudden growings pale; but then she was engaged to Uncle Joseph, and doubtless these were symptoms of the delightful malady she laboured under herself, though she hoped that she concealed her own little tumults of the spirit more successfully. Rose was all attention and eager interest now--quite vehemently interested, it really seemed. "Your happiness for life is at stake, Margaret. I will not stand by and see you robbed of the man of your choice. And he is so nice! Joseph thinks all the world of him, I know. I see Joseph coming this way. We must devise something for you. My own idea is that you should get married at once. It will be easier to reconcile your mother afterwards. But here he is." Joseph sat down beside his affianced, and she was so eager to speak to him that he was delighted. He too had observed her fits of absence, and had attributed them to the same cause as Margaret; but he wondered that they did not begin to subside as the idea of her engagement grew familiar. She was eager enough now. How pleasant it was! And it was in Margaret she was interesting herself, which was "nice" in her. Mrs Naylor observed the eagerness, and was disgusted. It was positively indelicate, she thought, for a girl not yet married to make such open advances before a roomful of people. "Poor Joseph! What a fool he was! And how he would suffer for it by-and-by! A bold, forward girl!"