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64 why they were so ill-natured. But they have gone away, and spread the report abroad that you are to be married to Colonel Wybrowe; so if you have made up your mind not to have him, he had much better go, and not waste his time and make himself miserable for nothing."

"I have not made up my mind."

"Well, will you do so, Bessie, by the end of the week?"

There was a long pause before she replied, "I will."

It was growing dark when Mrs. Shaw left her and tripped into the smoking-room. She looked round; Colonel Wybrowe was alone.

She came up close to where he sat, in an armchair near the window, a cigar in his mouth, reading the Sporting Gazette. He dropped it, and looked up inquiringly into her face. Her hand played with his fair beard for a moment.

"It will be all right," she whispered, as she stooped over him, and pressed her lips to his.

Then she turned and ran lightly out of the room. The first gong for dinner had just sounded.

Mrs. Shaw, with a fine instinct for the best conditions of love-making, had some of the neighbours every day to dinner. How could Wybrowe and the object of his pursuit enjoy a tête-à-tête with no one present but Uncle William and herself? A little party of eight or ten enabled the society to break up into couples, and wander about the garden and shrubberies by the clear starlight which shone upon Farley all that week. On the night in question, the rector, with his wife and two other