telling him? Of shall I ring the bell?'

'I'll tell him. We need not make more fuss than necessary, with the
servants, you know. I suppose I'd better not come back with him?'

There was a tone of supplication in the younger sister's voice as she
made the last suggestion, which ought to have melted the heart of the
elder; but it was unavailing. 'As he has asked to see me, I think you
had better not,' said Annabella. Miss Anne Prettyman bore her cross
meekly, offered no argument on the subject, and returning to the little
parlour where she had left the major, brought him upstairs, and ushered
him into her sister's room without even entering it again, herself.

Major Grantly was as intimately acquainted with Miss Anne Prettyman as a
man under thirty may well be with a lady nearer fifty than forty, who is
not specially connected with him by any family tie; but of Miss
Prettyman he knew personally very much less. Miss Prettyman, as has
before been said, did not go out, and was therefore not common to the
eyes of the Silverbridgians. She did occasionally see her friends in her
own house, and Grace Crawley's lover, as the major had come to be
called, had been there on more than one occasion; but of real personal
intimacy between them there had hitherto existed none. He might have
spoken, perhaps a dozen words to her in his life. He had now more than a
dozen to speak to her, but he hardly knew how to commence them.

She had got up and curtseyed, and had then taken his hand and asked him
to sit down. 'My sister tells me that you want to see me,' she said in
her softest, mildest voice.

'I do, Miss Prettyman. I want to speak to you about a matter that