Maria Shand was still Maria Shand, and was it not too probable that she had remained so for the sake of that companion who had gone away with her darling brother Dick?
'Maria has been thinking so much about your coming,' said the youngest,--not the girl who had been impertinent and ill-behaved before, for she had since become a grown-up Miss Shand, and had a young attorney of her own on hand, and was supposed to be the one of the family most likely to carry her pigs to a good market,--but the youngest of them all who had been no more than a child when he had been at Pollington before.

'I hope she is at home,' said Caldigate 'At home! Of course she's at home.

She wouldn't be away when you're coming!' The Shands were demonstrative, always;--and never hypocritical.

Here it was; told at once,--the whole story.

He was to atone for having left Dick in the lurch by marrying Maria.