“Oh, bosh! I hate your family parties; besides, Everard would have nothing in that case,” said Kate, ringing the bell for the maid, before whom they did not exactly continue their discussion, but launched forth about Dropmore and Alf. “There’s been some one over here from the barracks this morning,” said Sarah, “with a note for master. I think it was the Markis’s own man, miss.” “Whatever could it be?” cried both the sisters together, for they were very slipshod in their language, as the reader will perceive. “And Miss Kate did go all of a tremble, and her cheeks like strawberries,” Sarah reported in the servants’ hall, where, indeed, the Markis’s man had already learned that nothing but a wedding could excuse such goings on. “We ain’t such fools as we look,” that functionary had answered with a wink, witty as his master himself. I do not think that Kate, who knew the world, had any idea, after the first momentary thrill of curiosity, that Dropmore’s note to her father could contain anything of supreme importance, but it might be, and probably was, a proposal for some new expedition, at any one of which matters might come to a crisis; and she sallied forth from her room accordingly, in her fresh morning dress, looking a great deal fresher than she felt, and with a little subdued excitement in her mind. She went to the library, where her father generally spent his mornings, and gave him her cheek to kiss, and asked affectionately after his health. “I do hope you have no rheumatism, papa, after last night. Oh, how cold it was! I don’t think I shall ever let myself be persuaded to go on the water in an east wind again.” “Not till the next time Dropmore asks,” said her father, in his surliest voice. “Dropmore, oh!” Kate shrugged her shoulders. “A great deal I care for what he asks. By-the-bye, I believe this is his cipher. Have you been hearing from Dropmore this morning, papa? and what does his most noble lordship please to want?” “Bah! what does it matter what he wants?” said Mr. Farrel-Austin, savagely. “Do you suppose I have nothing to do but act as secretary for your amusements? Not when I have news of my own like what I have this morning,” and his eye reverted to a large letter which lay before him with “Whiteladies” in a flowery heading above the date. “Is it true, then, that Herbert is better?” said Kate. “Herbert better! rubbish! Herbert will never be better; but that old witch has undermined me!” cried the disappointed heir, with flashing eyes. CHAPTER XVI. “Papa has just heard that Herbert Austin, who has Whiteladies, you know--our place that is to be--is much better; and he is low about it,” said Sophy. “Of course, if Herbert were to get better it would be a great disappointment for us.” This speech elicited a shout of laughter from Dropmore and the rest, with running exclamations of “Frank, by Jove,” and “I like people who speak their minds.”