"Oh, dear, Archie, I thought you were never coming home!" she exclaimed. "And I have such news to tell you! There is a letter for you from Grace, and mother has written to me; and there is a note from Isabel inside, and she is engaged--really and truly engaged--to Mr. Ellis Burton; and the wedding is to be in six weeks, and you and I are to go down to it, and--oh, dear----" Here Mattie broke down, and began to sob with excitement and pleasure and the longing for sympathy.
"Well, well, there is nothing to cry about!" returned Archie, roughly; and then his manner changed and softened in spite of himself; for after all, Isabel was his sister, and this was the first wedding in the family, and he could not hear such a piece of news unmoved. "Let me hear all about it," he said, by and by; and then he took poor hysterical little Mattie into the house, and gave her some wine, and was very kind to her, and listened to his mother's letter and Isabel's gushing effusion without a single sneer. "Poor little Belle; she does seem very happy!" he said, quite affectionately, as he turned up the lamp still more, and began Grace's letter.
Mattie sat and gazed at him in a sort of ecstasy; but she did not venture to ask him to read it to her. How nice he was to-night, and how handsome he looked! there never was such a brother as Archie. But suddenly, as though he was conscious of being watched, he sat down by the table, and shaded his face with his hand.
No, Mattie, was right in her surmise: he would not have cared to show that letter to any one.
The first sheet was all about Isabel. "Dear little Isabel has just left me," wrote Grace. "The child looks so pretty in her new happiness, you would hardly know her. She has just been showing me the magnificent hoop of diamonds Ellis has given her. She says we must all call him Ellis now. 'Chacun a son gout:' Poor Ellis is not very brilliant, certainly: I remember we used to call him clownish and uncultivated. But he has a good heart, and he is really very fond of Isabel; and as she is satisfied, I suppose we need not doubt the wisdom of her choice. Mother is radiant, and makes so much of the little bride-elect that she declares her head is quite turned. The house is quite topsy-turvy with the excitement of this first wedding in the family. Isabel is very young to be married, and I tell mother six weeks is far too short for an engagement; but it seems Ellis will not listen to reason, and he has talked mother over. Perhaps I am rather fastidious, but, if I were Isabel, I should hate to receive my trousseau from my lover; and yet Ellis wants his mother to get everything for his _fiancee_. I believe there is to be a sort of compromise, and Mrs. Burton is to select heaps of pretty things,--dresses and mantles and Paris bonnets. They are rolling in riches. Ellis has taken a large house in Sloane Square, and his father has bought him a landau and a splendid pair of horses; everything--furniture, plate and ornaments--is to be as massive and expensive as possible. If I were Isabel I should feel smothered by all these grand things but the little lady takes it all quite coolly.