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again after her curtsey, wishing much that Hester was with her. Hester had a happy knack of either knowing or suggesting something to say.

      "We hope you will find yourself comfortable," said the two ladies, who by dint of always beginning to speak together had the air of making their remarks in common; but Miss Matilda had better wind and a firmer disposition than her sister, and always carried the day. "You are lucky in having the end house, which has all the fresh air. I am sure we do not grudge you anything, but it always makes us feel how we are boxed up; that is our house between the wings. It is monotonous to see nothing but the garden—but we don't complain."

      "I am sure I am very sorry," Mrs. John began to say.

      "Your favourable opinion of the end houses is very complimentary," said Mr. Mildmay. "I wish it were founded on fact. My windows look into the pool and draw all the miasma out of it. When I have a fire I feel it come in. But I say nothing. What would be the good of it? We are not here only to please ourselves. Beggars should not be choosers."

      "I hope, Mr. Mildmay Vernon, that you will speak for yourself," said the sisters. "We do not consider that such an appellation applies to us. We are not obliged, I beg to say," Miss Matilda added, "to live anywhere that does not suit us. If we come here as a favour to Catherine Vernon, who makes such a point of having all her relations about her, it is not that we are beggars, or anything of the sort."

      "Dear, dear me!" said Mrs. John, clasping her hands, "I hope nobody thinks that is the case. For my poor dear husband's sake, and for Hester's sake, I could never submit—; Catherine offered the house out of kindness—nothing but that."

      "Oh, nothing but that," said Mr. Mildmay Vernon, with a sneer.

      "Nothing at all but that," said the Miss Vernon-Ridgways. "She said to us, I am sure, that it would be a favour to herself—a personal favour. Don't you remember, Martha? Nothing else would induce us, as you may suppose, Mrs. John—my sister and me, who have many friends and resources—to put up with a little poky place—the worst, quite the worst, here. But dear Catherine is very lonely. She is not a person, you know, that can do with everybody. You must understand her before you can get on with her. Shouldn't you say so? And she is perhaps, you know, a little too fond of her own way. People who can't make allowances as relatives do, are apt not to—like her, in short. And it is such a great stand-by for her—such a comfort, to have us here."

      "I should have thought she was very—independent," said Mrs. John, faltering a little. She did not even venture to risk an opinion; but something she was obliged to say. "But I can scarcely say I know her," she added, anxiously, "for it is thirty years since I was at Redborough, and people change so much. She was young then."

      "Young! she must have been nearly forty. Her character must have been what one may call formed by that time," said Mr. Mildmay; "but I know what you mean. Our dear Catherine whom we are all so fond of——"

      "You are quite right," said Miss Matilda, emphatically, "quite right, though perhaps you mean something different, for gentlemen are always so strange. We are very fond of dear Catherine. All the more that so many people misunderstand her, and take wrong ideas. I think indeed that you require to be a relation, to enter into the peculiarities of the case, and take everything into consideration, before you can do dear Catherine justice. She is so good, but under such a brusque exterior. Though she never means to hurt any one's feelings—that I am certain of."

      "Oh never!" cried Mr. Mildmay, with mock enthusiasm, lifting up his hands and eyes.

      Mrs. John looked, as each spoke, from one to the other with a great deal of perplexity. It had seemed to her simple mind at first that it was with a real enthusiasm that their general benefactress was being discussed; but by this time she had begun to feel the influence of the undertone. She was foolish, but there was no rancour in her mind. So gentle a little shaft as that which she had herself shot, in vindication, as she thought of her husband, rather than as assailing his successor, she might be capable of; but systematic disparagement puzzled the poor lady. She looked first at the Miss Vernon-Ridgways, and then at Mr. Mildmay Vernon, with a bewildered look, trying to make out what they meant. And then she was moved to make to the conversation a contribution of her own—

      "I am afraid my little girl made a sad mistake last night," she said. "Catherine was so kind as to come to see me—without ceremony—and I had gone to bed."

      "That was so like Catherine!" the Miss Vernon-Ridgways cried. "Now anybody else would have come next day at soonest to let you have time to rest and get over your journey. But that is just what she would be sure to do. Impatience is a great defect in her character, it must be allowed. She wanted you to be delighted, and to tell her how beautiful everything was. It must be confessed it is a little tiresome. You must praise everything, and tell her you are so comfortable. One wouldn't like it in anybody else."

      "But what I regret so much," continued poor Mrs. John, "is that Hester, my little girl, who had never heard of Catherine—she is tall, but she is only fourteen, and such a child! Don't you know she would not let her in? I am afraid she was quite rude to her."

      Here Mrs. John's artless story was interrupted by a series of little cheers from Mr. Mildmay, and titters from the two sisters.

      "Brava!" he said. "Well done!" taking away Mrs. John's breath; while the two ladies uttered little laughs and titterings, and exchanged glances of pleasure.

      "Oh, how very funny!" they cried. "Oh, what an amusing thing to happen! Dear Catherine, what a snub for her! How I wish we had been there to see."

      "I should like to make acquaintance with your little Hester, my dear lady," said Mr. Mildmay. "She must have a fine spirit. Our respected Cousin Catherine is only human, and we all feel that to be opposed now and then would be for her moral advantage. We flatter her ourselves, being grown-up persons: but we like to know that she encounters something now and then that will be for her good."

      "I must again ask you to speak for yourself, Mr. Mildmay," said the sisters; "flattery is not an art I am acquainted with. Dear, dear, what a sad thing for a beginning. How nervous it must have made you! and knowing that dear Catherine, though she is so generous, cannot forgive a jest. She has no sense of humour; it is a great pity. She will not, I fear, see the fun of it as we do."

      "Do you think," said Mrs. John, with a little tremor, "that she will be dreadfully angry? Hester is such a child—and then, she didn't know."

      The sisters both shook their heads upon their long necks. They wished no particular harm to Mrs. John; but they would not have been sorry so to frighten her, as that she should go away as she came. And they sincerely believed Catherine to be as they represented her. Few people are capable of misrepresenting goodness in the barefaced way of saying one thing while they believe another. Most commonly they have made out of shreds and patches of observation and dislike, a fictitious figure meriting all their anger and contempt, to which they attach the unloved name. Catherine Vernon, according to their picture of her, was a woman who, being richer than they, helped them all with an ostentatious benevolence, which was her justification for humiliating them whenever she had a chance, and treating them at all times as her inferiors and pensioners. Perhaps they would themselves have done so in Catherine Vernon's place. This at all events was the way in which they had painted her to themselves. They had grown to believe that she was all this, and to expect her to act in accordance with the character they had given her. When the sun shone into the summer-house, and routed the little company, which happened just about the time when the meal which they called luncheon, but which to most of them was dinner, was ready, Mrs. John carried back with her to her new home a tremulous conviction that any sort of vengeance was possible. She might be turned out of this shelter, or she might be made to feel that her life was a burden. And yet when she got back to the low cool room in which Hester, doubtful of Betsey's powers, was superintending the laying out of the table, it seemed to her, in the prospect of losing it, more desirable than it had been before. There were three windows in deep recesses, one of them with a cheerful outlook along the road that skirted the Common, in which was placed a soft, luxurious chair, which was exactly what Mrs. John liked. Nothing could have been more grateful, coming out of the sunshine, than the coolness of this brown

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