easily done; a little fire of a morning—the expense will be nothing. Stay, we will have a little fire here now for a welcome. She shall always have fire.'
'Better change the pipe, Pierre,' said Isabel, 'that will be permanent, and save the coals.'
'It shall not be done, Isabel. Doth not that pipe and that warmth go into thy room? Shall I rob my wife, good Delly, even to benefit my most devoted and true-hearted cousin?'
'Oh! I should say not, sir; not at all,' said Delly hysterically.
A triumphant fire flashed in Isabel's eye; her full bosom arched out; but she was silent.
'She may be here, now, at any moment, Isabel,' said Pierre; 'come, we will meet her in the dining-room; that is our reception-place, thou knowest.'
So the three went into the dining-room.
II
They had not been there long, when Pierre, who had been pacing up and down, suddenly paused, as if struck by some laggard thought, which had just occurred to him at the eleventh hour. First he looked toward Delly, as if about to bid her quit the apartment, while he should say something private to Isabel; but as if, on a second thought, holding the contrary of this procedure most advisable, he, without preface, at once addressed Isabel, in his ordinary conversational tone, so that Delly could not but plainly hear him, whether she would or no.
'My dear Isabel, though, as I said to thee before, my cousin, Miss Tartan, that strange, and wilful, nun-like girl, is at all hazards, mystically resolved to come and live with us, yet it must be quite impossible that her friends can approve in her such a singular step; a step
