LITMIR.BIZ

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dost thou wonder to hear me laugh?” asked she. “I seemed like as if I saw, all at once, that sunshine afternoon when thou earnest first over from the Manor House, sent of my Lady Norris to make friends with us. Dost remember?”

      “And thou earnest tripping lightly down the stairs, clad of a russet gown, and leddest me up to see Anstace. ‘Do I remember it!’ Ah, Joyce, my sister, there be sore changes since that day!”

      “Be there so?” said Joyce, and smiled brightly enough. “A good number of miles nearer Home, Lettice, and a good number of treasures laid up for both of us, where neither moth nor rust shall hurt them. My treasures are all there which are not likewise thine. And now let me see the new gems in thy jewel-box. Who art thou, my maid?”

      “I am Lettice Murthwaite, Madam, if you please.”

      “My dear heart, I do not please to be called Madam. I am thine Aunt Joyce. Come here and kiss me, if thou wilt.”

      Lettice knelt down by the couch, and kissed the old lady.

      “There is not much of Nell here, Lettice,” said Joyce to Lady Louvaine. “ ’Tis her father the child is like. Now then, which of these two lads is Aubrey—he with the thinking brow, or he with the restless eyes?”

      Lady Louvaine called Aubrey, and he came up.

      “Why, thou art like nobody,” said Aunt Joyce. “Neither Ned nor Faith, nor any of Ned’s elders. Lettice, where is Faith? hast not brought her withal?”

      Faith was in the hall, listening to a lecture from Temperance, embellished by such elegancies as “Stuff and nonsense!” and “Listen to reason!” which ended up at last with “Lancaster and Derby!” and Faith came slowly in, with her everlasting handkerchief at her eyes.

      “Nay, Faith, sweet heart, no tears!” cried the old lady. “Sure there’s nought to weep for this even, without thou art so dog-weary that thou canst not keep them back.”

      “Mistress Morrell, I wish you good even,” said Temperance, coming in after her sister. “If you’ll but learn Faith to keep that handkerchief of hers in her pocket, you’ll have done the best work ever you did since we saw you last in Derwent-dale. She’s for ever and the day after a-fretting and a-petting, for why she’d better tell you, for I’m a Dutchman if I can make out.”

      Aunt Joyce looked from one to the other.

      “So unfeeling!” came Faith’s set form, from behind the handkerchief. “And me a poor widow!”

      The old lady’s face went very grave, and all the cheeriness passed out of it.

      “Faith, you are not the only widow in the chamber,” she said gently. “Temperance, my dear, she is weary, maybe.”

      “She hasn’t got a bit of call,” rejoined Temperance. “Sat all day long in my Lord Dilston’s smart caroche, lolling back in the corner, just like a feather-bed. Mistress Joyce, ’tis half ill-temper and half folly—that’s what it is.”

      “Well, well, my dear, we need not judge our neighbours.—Edith, my child, thou knowest the house as well as I; wilt thou carry thy friends above? Rebecca hath made ready My Lady’s Chamber for my Lady,”—with a smile at her old friend—“and the Fetterlock Chamber for Faith and Temperance. The Old Wardrobe is for thee and Lettice, and the lads shall lie in the Nursery.”

      Names to every room, after this fashion, were customary in old houses. The party were to stay at Minster Lovel for four days, from Friday to Tuesday, and then to pursue their journey to London.

      In the Old Wardrobe, a pleasant bedchamber on the upper floor, Lettice washed off the dust of the journey, and changed her clothes when the little trunk came up which held the necessaries for the night. Then she tried to find her way to the Credence Chamber, and—as was not very surprising—lost it, coming out into a long picture-gallery where she was at once struck and entranced by a picture that hung there. It represented a young girl about her own age, laid on a white couch, and dressed in white, but with such a face as she had never seen on any woman in this life. It was as white as the garments, with large dark eyes, wherein it seemed to Lettice as if her very soul had been melted; a soul that had gone down into some dreadful deep, and having come up safe, was ever afterwards anxiously ready to help other souls out of trouble. She would have thought the painter meant it for an angel, but that angels are not wont to be invalids and lie on couches. Beside this picture hung another, which reminded her of her Grandfather Louvaine; but this was of a young man, not much older than Aubrey, yet it had her grandfather’s eyes, which she had seen in none else save her Aunt Edith. Now Lettice began to wonder where she was, and how she should find her way; and hearing footsteps, she waited till they came up, when she saw old Rebecca.

      “Why, my dear heart, what do you here?” said she kindly.

      “Truly, I know not,” the youthful visitor answered. “I set forth to go down the stairs, and missed the right turning, as I guess. But pray you, Rebecca, ere you set me in the way, tell me of whom are these two pictures?”

      “Why,” said she, “can you not guess? The one is of your own grandfather, Sir Aubrey Louvaine.”

      “Oh, then it is Grandfather when he was young. But who is this, Rebecca? It looks like an angel, but angels are never sick, and she seems to be lying sick.”

      “There be angels not yet in Heaven, Mistress Lettice,” softly answered the old servant. “And if you were to live to the age of Methuselah, you’d never see a portrait of one nearer the angels than this. ’Tis a picture that old Squire—Mistress Joyce’s father—would have taken, nigh sixty years since, of our angel, our Mistress Anstace, when she was none so many weeks off the golden gate. They set forth with her in a litter for London town, and what came back was her coffin, and that picture.”

      “Was she like that?” asked Lettice, scarcely above her breath, for she felt as if she could not speak aloud, any more than in church.

      “She was, and she was not,” said old Rebecca. “Them that knew her might be minded of her. She was like nothing in this world. But, my dear heart, I hear Mrs. Edith calling for you. Here be the stairs, and the Credence Chamber, where supper is laid, is the first door on your left after you reach the foot.”

      On the Saturday evening, as they sat round the fire in the Credence Chamber, Edith asked Aunt Joyce if old Dr. Cox were still parson of Minster Lovel.

      “Nay,” said she; “I would he were. We have a new lord and new laws, the which do commonly go together.”

      “What manner of lord?” inquired Edith.

      “And what make of laws?” said Temperance.

      “Bad, the pair of them,” said the old lady.

      “Why, is he a gamester or drunkard?” asked Lady Louvaine.

      “Or a dumb dog that cannot bark?” suggested Temperance.

      “Well, I’d fain have him a bit dumber,” was Aunt Joyce’s answer. “At least, I wish he’d dance a bit less.”

      “Dance!” cried Edith.

      “Well!” said Aunt Joyce, “what else can you call it, when a man measures his steps, goes two steps up and bows, then two steps down and bows, then up again one step, with a great courtesy, and holds up his hands as if he were astonished—when there’s nothing in the world to astonish him except his own foolish antics?”

      “But where doth he this?” said Lady Louvaine: “here in the chamber, or out of door?”

      “Dear heart! in the church.”

      “But for why?”

      “Prithee ask at him, for I can ne’er tell thee.”

      “Did you ne’er ask him, Aunt?” said Edith.

      “For sure did I, and gat no answer that I could make aught of: only

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