CHAPTER XXIX.
Me, too, with mastering charm From husks of dead days freeing, The sun draws up to be warm And to bloom in this sweet hour.
The stem of all my being Waited to bear this flower.
-- LAURENCE BINYON.
It would be hardly possible to describe the unholy, the unmeasured rejoicing to which Magdalen's engagement gave rise in her family.

It is, perhaps, enough to say that the twenty years of her cheerful, selfless devotion to the domestic hearth had never won from her father and her two aunts anything like the admiring approval which her engagement at once elicited.

The neighbourhood was interested.

Lord Lossiemouth was a brilliant match for anyone (if you left out the man himself).

The announcement read impressively in the _Morning Post_.