"The haste is for his children's sake," said Miss Upton; "be very sure of that, Betsy. 'I must have some one to control and train them; since my poor wife's death the girls have run wild,' he said to me yesterday, when he told me about Mary, and the tears were almost running down his cheeks."
"It is a great charge," spoke Mr. Grubb. "I mean for Lady Mary."
"It is," acquiesced Miss Upton. "But I hope—I think—she will be found equal to it, and will prove a good stepmother. That she understands the responsibility she is undertaking, and has counted the cost, I am sure of, by what she said in a long letter I received from her this morning."
"It is to be hoped she will have no children of her own," struck in Lady Acorn. "Many a woman makes a good stepmother until her own babies come. After that——"
"After that—what?" asked Miss Upton, for Lady Acorn had stopped abruptly.
"After that, she thinks of her own children and not of the first wife's. And sometimes the poor things get hardly dealt by."
"And when is the wedding-day to be?" asked Adela.
"The day after twelve months shall have elapsed since the death of the first Mrs. Cleveland; or in as short a time subsequent to that day as may be convenient to me and the milliners," laughed Lady Acorn.
"That will make it some time in August, mamma?"
"Yes, in August."