"Yours very truly,
"TUDOR SWINNERTON.
"P.S.—Miss Lloyd and I are to be married next month in St. Luke's Church, quite near here."
I handed the letter back to Margaret, and we never spoke the whole way home. And that was the last day I ever saw Margaret Jamieson look pretty.
CHAPTER XVI.
After the operation on my leg, I was laid up for a long time, and when I got about again, Palestrina and Thomas were married. Thomas has lately come into his kingdom in the shape of a lordly castle in Scotland, and for the life of me I can't say whether or not Palestrina hastened her wedding because the doctor ordered me to the North. If it was so, my sister's plans were frustrated by the fact that Thomas's ancient Scottish seat was pronounced uninhabitable by a sanitary surveyor, just as we proposed entering it under garlanded archways and mottoes on red cotton. Our old friend Mrs. Macdonald, hearing of our dilemma, very kindly invited us to stay with her while Palestrina and Thomas looked about for some little house that would take us in till their own place should be ready. The finding of the little house occupied some days, owing to the powers of imagination displayed by people when describing their property. One lady, to whom Palestrina wrote to ask if her house were to be let, replied, "Yes, madam; this dear, delightful, pretty house is to let;" and she pointed out in a letter, some four pages long, all the advantages that would accrue to us if we took it, ending up with the suggestion, subtly conveyed, that by taking the house we should be turning her into the street, but that she would bear this indignity in consideration of receiving ten guineas a week.
Palestrina went to see it, and returned in the evening, almost in tears, to say that the house was a semi-detached villa, and that she had found the week's washing spread out on the front lawn.
Thomas said that the railway companies ought to pay a percentage on all misleading advertisements which induce people to make these useless journeys.
The following day they returned from another fruitless expedition, having been to see a very small house owned by the widow of a sea-captain, with a strong Scottish accent. I have often noticed that the seafaring man's one idea of well-invested capital is house property—perhaps he alone knows how precarious is the life of the sea. And I shall like to meet the sailor who has invested his money in a shipping concern. The widow's house was so very small that it was almost impossible to believe that it contained the ten bedrooms as advertised in my sister's well-worn house-list. So small indeed were the rooms, that Palestrina said she felt sure that they must have been originally intended for cupboards. Nevertheless, the rent of the house was very high, and my sister ventured gently to hint this to the lady of the house—the sea-captain's widow with the strong Scottish accent.
"Of course, it is a very nice house," she said politely; "but the rent is a little more than we thought of paying for a house of this size."