What could she see to like in that common looking, commonplace man, whom she could not have met a dozen times, of whose domestic life she knew nothing, and whose personality Elizabeth, with the sharp observation often found in her class, probably because coarse people do not care to hide their coarseness from servants, had speedily set down at her own valuation-- "Neither carriage nor horses, nor nothing, will ever make him a gentleman ?" He, however, sent Miss Selina home magnificently in the said carriage; Ascott with her, who had been picked up somewhere in the City and who came in to his dinner, without the slightest reference to going "out of town." But in spite of her Lord Mayor's Show, and the great attention which she said she had received from "various members of the Common Council of the City of London," Miss Selina was, for her, meditative, and did not talk quite so much as usual.

There was in the little parlor an uncomfortable atmosphere, as if all of them had something on their minds.

Hilary felt the ice must be broken, and if she did not do it nobody else would.

So she said, stealing her hand into Johanna's under shelter of the dim fire-light, "Selina, I wanted to have a little family consultation.

I have just received an offer." "An offer!" repeated Miss Selina, with a visible start.