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"Oh, immediately. As soon as possible."

"In that case you will be there before I shall. I told you, I have nobody very nearly belonging to me; but there is a cousin--a sort of cousin--living in the place; Mrs. Armitage; I will send her word to open the house and get it in some sort of order for us."

Both were silent again for a space, and I think not only one was happy.

For Dolly knew the plan would work. But she was struggling besides with a thought which she wanted, and did not want, to speak. It must come out! or Dolly would not have been Dolly.

"Mr. Shubrick"---- she began.

"What?" said he eagerly; for Dolly's tone showed that there was a good deal behind it.

"Would you--I was thinking"----

"About what?"

"The house. Would you--trust _me?_ I mean, of course, if we are there before you?"

A flood of colour rushed over Dolly's face.

"Trust you?" he said with a bright light in his eyes. "What am I going to do all my life? Trust you to put your own house in order? I cannot think of anything I should like quite so well. What a delightful thought, Dolly!"

"I should like it," said Dolly shyly.

"Then, instead of writing to Mrs. Armitage to open the house, I will send her an order to deliver the key to Mrs. Shubrick."

He liked to watch how the colour flitted on her face, and the lines of brow and lip varied; how she fluttered like a caught bird, and yet a bird that did not want to fly away. Dolly was frank enough; there was nothing affected, or often even conscious, about this shy play; it was the purest nature in sweetest manifestation. Shyness was something Dolly had never been guilty of with anybody but Mr. Shubrick; it was an involuntary tribute she constantly paid to him.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THIS PICTURE AND THAT.

The plan worked, as Dolly had known from the first, that it would. Mrs.

Copley came into it, and then Mr. Copley could not resist. It only grieved Mrs. Copley's heart that there should be, as she said, no wedding. "Might as well be married in a barn!" she said.

The barn-like effect was a little taken off by Lord and Lady Brierley's presence at the ceremony, which to be sure was performed in no barn, but the pretty village church; and by the breakfast given to Dolly thereafter at the great house. This was not what Dolly or Mr. Shubrick had desired. It came about on this wise.

Dolly went to pay a farewell visit of thanks to Lady Brierley and to her good friend the housekeeper. Sandie accompanied her. Now, Mr.

Shubrick was one of those persons who make their way in all companies.

Lady Brierley, talking to Dolly, eyed the while the figure of the young officer, his face, and his fine, quiet, frank manners; watched him talking with her husband, who happened to come in; and also caught with her practised eye a glance or two of Dolly's. Dolly, be it remarked, was not shy here; before her noble friends, she neither flushed nor trembled nor was nervous. But Lady Brierley saw how things were.

"So," said her ladyship at last, when Dolly was about taking leave,--"you have not told me, but I know it,--you are going home to get married!"

"That would seem to be the natural order of things," said Sandie, as Dolly was not immediately ready with her answer; "but we are going to reverse the terms. We are purposing to be married first and then go home."

The lady looked at him with a curious mixture of expressions; it was too early in the century then for an officer of the American navy to be altogether a pleasant sight to the eyes of an Englishwoman; at the same time, she could not wholly withhold her liking from this young officer's fine looks and manly bearing. She turned to Dolly again.

"I hope you are going to ask me to your wedding," she said. "When is it to be, Dolly?"

"My mother thinks it does not deserve to be called a wedding," said Dolly, dimpling and growing rosy. "I should not have ventured to ask your ladyship. But if you are so kind--it is to be on the morning of the 10th--very early in the morning, for Mr. Shubrick has to set off that day to rejoin his ship."

"I'll get up by daybreak," said her ladyship, arching her brows, "if it is necessary. And you will come here from the church and have breakfast with me, will you? It would be a great pleasure to me."

So it had been arranged; and, as I said, Mrs. Copley had been a good deal comforted by the means. Lady Brierley's breakfast was beautiful; she had caused her rooms to be dressed with flowers in Dolly's honour; the company was small, but the more harmonious; and the presents given to Dolly were very handsome.

And now there is nothing more to do, but to give two pictures; and even for them there is hardly room.

The scene of the first, is a house in Harley Street, London. It is an excellent house, and just new furnished and put in cap-a-pie order from top to bottom. In the drawing-room a group of people taking a general survey. One of them a very handsome young man, in unexceptionable style, waiting upon two ladies; a beauty, and the beauty's mother.

Things in the house meet approval.

"I think it is perfect," said Mrs. Thayer. "Just perfect. The man has done his work very well." She was referring to the upholsterer, and at the moment looking at the window curtains.

"Isn't that a lovely tint of French grey?" said Christina, "and the blue fringe is the right thing for it. I think the folds are a little too full--but it is a good fault. It is all right, I believe. I do like a drawing-room with no fault in it, no eye-sore."

"There could hardly be any fault in the work of Hans and Piccalilly,"

remarked St. Leger.

"Oh, I don't know, Lawrence," said the young lady. "Didn't they do the Fortescues' house? and the drawing-room is in white and gold; very pretty in itself, but just think how it will set off all those florid people. A bunch of peonies on a white ground!"

Lawrence laughed. "_You_ can bear anything," he said. "But blue suits you."

"It's just perfect," Mrs. Thayer repeated. "I see nothing to find fault with. Yes, Christina can bear anything and wear anything. It saves a great deal of trouble. When I was a girl I had a different complexion.

I wasn't a peony, but I _was_ a rose--not a white rose; and anything shading on red I could not wear; not purple, nor claret, nor even ashes of roses. It was a regular perplexity, to get variety enough with the small number of shades at my disposal; for orange did not become me, either. Well, I can wear anything now, too," she added with a half laugh. "And it is nothing to anybody."

"Mamma, you know better than that," said Christina.

"Now," said Lawrence, "the question is, when shall we take possession?

The house is all ready for us."

"There is no use in taking possession till we are ready to keep it; and it would be dull to stay in town all winter, wouldn't it?" said Christina. "Whatever should we do?"

"Very dull," said Mrs. Thayer. "It is a long while yet before the season begins. Better be anywhere else."

"I was thinking of Brighton," said Christina. "I think I should like that."

"After the Peacocks," said Lawrence. "We are due there, you know, for a visit."

"Oh, after the Peacocks, of course. But then,--do you think, Lawrence, we could do anything better than go to Brighton? Till the season opens?"

Brighton quite met Mr. St. Leger's views of what was desirable.

It was a month or two later, as it happened, that another house was undergoing inspection, a house at a very great distance from Harley Street, geographically and otherwise; but let the reader judge. This was a country house in a fair New England village; where there was land enough for everybody, and everybody had land, and in consequence the habitations of men were individually, as the habitations of men should be, surrounded with grass and trees and fields; the very external arrangements of the place giving thereby a type of the free and independent life and wide space for mental and characteristic development enjoyed by the inhabitants. The particular house in question was not outwardly remarkable above many others; it stood in a fair level piece of ground, shaded and surrounded with beautiful old American elms. The inspectors of the same were two ladies.

Dolly had come to the village a week or two before. Mr. Copley was not just then in condition to be left alone; so as her mother could not be with her, she had summoned her dear Aunt Hal, from Philadelphia; and Mr. Eberstein would not be left behind. All three they had come to this place, found quarters at the inn, and since then Dolly and Mrs.

Eberstein had been very busy getting the house cleaned and put in order. The outside, as I said, gave promise of nothing remarkable; Dolly had been the more surprised and pleased to find the interior extremely pleasant and not commonplace. Rooms were large and airy; picturesquely arranged; and furnished, at least in part, in a style for which she had not been at all prepared. The house had been for a long stretch of years in the possession of a family, not wealthy, but well to do, and cultivated; and furthermore, several of the members of it at different times had been seafaring; and, as happens in such cases, there had been brought home from foreign parts a small multitude of objects of art or convenience which bore witness to distant industries and fashions. India mats of fine quality were on some of the floors; India hangings at some of the windows; beautiful china was found to be in quantity, both of useful and ornamental kinds. Little lacquered tables; others of curious inlaid work; bamboo chairs; Chinese screens and fans; and I know not what all besides. Dolly and Mrs. Eberstein reviewed these articles with great interest and admiration; they gave the house, simple as it was, an air of elegance which its exterior quite forbade one to look for. At the same time, some other necessary things were wanting, or worn. The carpet in what Dolly called the drawing-room was one of these instances. It was very much the worse for wear. Dolly and her aunt went carefully over everything; adjusting, supplying, arranging, here and there; Dolly getting a number of small presents by the way, and a few that were not small. At last Mr.

Eberstein sent in a fine carpet for the drawing-room; and Dolly would not have it put down.

"Not till Mr. Shubrick comes," she said.

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