Next day I trotted over to the Hall. Mr Percy Marvale was busy putting
the finishing stroke to his _Demon of the Waste_, in which the
interesting incident of the murder in the shooting-box is introduced;
and Frank and I had a long and confidential conversation in the garden.
Miss Sibylla Smith and the students of three-volume novels were for once
very nearly right in their guesses on the subject of his tutor's
daughter. He certainly was in love, if not engaged, but not exactly in
the way they had imagined; and it struck me that, in spite of his
declaration of constancy and firmness, there was still a very reasonable
chance of there being an opening for some of the bees alluded to by my
wife. For my own part, I am no believer in sentiment and romance, and
could not enter into Frank's feelings at all.

Not far from Frank's guardian's house, in Leicestershire, there was a
small white-walled villa, surrounded by pretty pleasure grounds, and
inhabited by the most enchanting family in the world. The father, a
clergyman, too much of an invalid to hold a living, and only rich enough
to struggle on in the quietest possible way, with a wife and a daughter.
The wife, of course, was all that was amiable and wise; and the
daughter, Alice, endowed with every possible perfection. As to her
beauty, it was above description, and her disinterestedness almost
incredible. Every week, and at least every day of every week, Frank
found himself at the fireside of the Reverend Mr Elstree, and no mother
and sister could be so affectionate to him as Mrs Elstree and Alice. He
was only fourteen, to be sure, when the acquaintance began, and the girl
nine or ten; so that when he was twenty-one, he could not recall by what
means, or on what occasion, he had told Alice he was devoted to her; nor
could he even recollect what method she had taken to tell him she was
delighted to hear it; but the case was, nevertheless, as complete a case