"O Dora, that seems a poor substitute for those who should be nearer and dearer," cried Bothwell. In the next instant he would gladly have recalled his words, for he saw the tears well up to his cousin's eyes, and he knew that her childless marriage was a grief. "You are too good, far more generous than I deserve," he went on hurriedly. "But let the money be at least called a loan. If fortune favour me within the next few years, it will be such a pleasure to give you back your money. And if Fate prove unkind, I shall know I have not a hard creditor. But I have made up my mind to be successful. I mean to work as men seldom work--to make everything I do a labour of love. And with such a wife as Hilda--" "Hilda will be a wife in a thousand. I am sure your pupils will adore her; and you must make your house very pretty, for Hilda's sake. Seven hundred will not be half enough." "It will be more than enough. You don't know how economically I can build, and how cleverly Hilda and I will contrive to furnish. We will ride over the country to overhaul all the cottages and farmhouses in quest of neglected old bits of Chippendale and Sheraton. We shall get lovely old things for a mere song, and find some clever jobbing cabinet-maker to make them as good as new--" "And in the end you will find they will have cost you more than if you had bought them from Nosotti," said Dora, laughing at his eagerness. "I know how costly that kind of economy is apt to prove in the long-run. You had better get your Sheraton or your Chippendale furniture made on purpose for you, new and sound and convenient, and of more charming designs than Chippendale ever imagined." "No, Dora. I am intense as a Chippendalist. I must have the real thing--old, and inconvenient even, if you like." "What a boy you are still, Bothwell! And now I am going to tell you something that will please you." "Hilda is coming here to-morrow," speculated Bothwell eagerly. "No. Hilda is not coming back while her brother is away. That is not my good news, Bothwell. It is even better than that." And then she told him the contents of Heathcote's letter. "I am very glad," he said quietly. "That is at least one knocked off the list of my suspicious friends." Julian Wyllard came into the drawing-room while the cousins were sitting together talking, their heads bending towards each other. The family likeness between them was very strong. They looked like brother and sister; and they looked very happy. Dora was in the garden next day when the postman brought his bag. She was no longer anxious about her letters, having received the expected tidings from Paris. She was moving slowly about among her roses, armed with a basket and a pair of garden scissors, cutting off blind buds and shabby blooms, making war upon her insect enemies--enjoying the balmy air and warm sunshine of early autumn.