cast, making every portrait seem to follow her with his eyes, as old portraits always do. Neither child was very interesting. Letitia, with her angular figure and thin light hair, looked not unlike a diminished spectral reflection of the foundress herself—that pale, prim, pre-Raphaelitish dame who was represented all over the college, in all sizes and varieties of the limner's art. Arthur, who hung a little behind his sister, was different from her, being stout and square; but he, too, was not an attractive child, and there was a dormant sullenness in his under lip which showed he could be a very naughty one if he chose.

"I told you so, Titia," said he, darting to an open door facing the staircase at the gallery's end. "There's papa's study fire lit. I knew he was coming home to-night, though aunts won't let us sit up, as he said we should. But I will! I'll lie awake, if it's till twelve o'clock, and call him as he passes the nursery door."

"You forget," said Titia, drawing herself up with a womanly air, "papa will not be alone now. He may not care to come to you now he has got Mrs. Grey."

"Mrs. Grey!"

"You know aunts told us always to call her so. I'm sure I don't want to call her any thing. I hate her!"

"So do I," rejoined the boy, doubling up his fist with intense enjoyment. "Wouldn't I like to pitch into her for marrying papa! But yet," with a sudden compunction, "she gave us lots of cake. And she looked rather jolly, eh?"

"Jolly! You boys are so vulgar," said the little lady, contemptuously.
"But I dare say you'll like her, for aunts say she is quite a vulgar person.
As for me, I don't mean to take any notice of her at all."

"A deal she'll care for that! Who minds you? you're only a girl."

"I'm glad I'm not a big, ugly, dirty-handed, common boy." Arthur's reply was short and summary, administered by one of those dirty hands, as he was in the habit of administering what he doubtless considered justice to his much cleverer, more precocious, and very sharp-tongued sister, even though she was "a girl." It was the only advantage he had over her and he used it, chivalry not being a thing which comes natural to most boys, and it, as well as the root and core of it, loving-kindness, not having been one of the things taught in these children's nursery.

Letitia set up an outcry of injured innocence, upon which nurse, who waited at the foot of the stairs, seeing something was amiss, while not stopping to discover what it was, did as she always did under similar circumstances—she flew to the contending parties and soundly thumped them both.

"Get to bed, you naughty children; you're always quarreling," rang the sharp voice, rising above Letitia's wail, and Arthur's storm of furious sobs. The girl yielded, but the boy hung back; and it was not until after a regular stand-up fight between him and the woman—a big, sturdy woman too—that he was carried off, still desperately resisting, and shouting that he would have his revenge as soon as ever papa came home.

Letitia followed quietly enough, as if the scene were too common for her to trouble herself much about it. The only other witness to it was the portrait of the mild-faced foundress, which seemed through the shadows of centuries to look down pitifully on these motherless children, as if with a remembrance of her own two little sons, whose sorrowful tale—is it not to be found in every English History, and why repeat it here?

Motherless children indeed these were, and had been, pathetically, ever since they were born. All the womanly bringing up they had had, even in Mrs. Grey's lifetime, had come from that grim nurse, Phillis.

Phillis was not an ordinary woman. The elements of a tragedy where in her low, broad, observant, and intelligent forehead, her keen black eyes, and her full-lipped, under-hanging mouth. Though past thirty, she was still comely, and when she looked pleasant, it was not an unpleasant face. Yet there lurked in it possibilities of passion that made you tremble, especially considering that she had the charge of growing children. You did not wonder at her supremacy in the nursery, but you wondered very much that any mother could have allowed her to acquire it.

For the rest, Phillis had entered the family as Letitia's wet-nurse, with the sad story of most wet-nurses. Her own child having died, she took to her foster-child with such intensity of devotedness as to save Mrs. Grey all trouble of loving or looking after the little creature from henceforward. And so she staid, through many storms and warnings to leave, but she never did leave—she was too necessary. And, in one sense, Phillis did her duty. Physically, no children could be better cared for than the little Greys. They were always well washed, well clad, and, in a certain external sense, well managed. The "rod in pickle," which Phillis always kept in the nursery, maintained a form of outward discipline and even manners, so far as Phillis knew what manners meant; morals too, in Phillis's style of morality. Beyond that Phillis's own will—strong and obstinate as it was—made laws for itself, which the children were obliged to obey. They rebelled; sometimes they actually hated her, and yet she had great influence over them—the earliest and closest influence they had ever known. Besides, the struggle had only begun when they were old enough to have some sense of the difference between justice and injustice, submission compelled and obedience lawfully won; to infants and little children Phillis was always very tender—nay, passionately loving.

As she was to Oliver, who, wakening at the storm in the nursery, took to sleepy crying, and was immediately lulled in her arms with the fondest soothing; the fiercest threatenings between whiles being directed to Letitia and Arthur, until they both slunk off to bed, sullen and silent—at war with one another, with Phillis, and with the whole world.

But children's woes are transient. By-and-by Titia's fretful face settled into sleepy peace; the angry flush melted from Arthur's hot cheeks; Oliver had already been transferred to his crib; and Phillis settled herself to her sewing, queen regnant of the silent nursery.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the ghostly gallery, sat, over the dining- room fire, the two other rulers, guardians, and guides of these three children—"the aunts"—Miss Gascoigne and Miss Grey; for these ladies still remained at the Lodge. Dr. Grey had asked Christian if she wished them to leave, for they had a house of their own near Avonsbridge, and she had answered indifferently, "Oh no; let them do as they like." As she liked did not seem to enter into her thoughts. Alas! that sacred dual solitude, which most young wives naturally and rightfully desire, was no vital necessity to Christian Grey.

So the two ladies, who had come to the Lodge when their sister died, had declared their intention of remaining there, at least for the present, "for the sake of those poor, dear children." And, dressed in at their best, they sat solemnly waiting the arrival of the children's father and step-mother—"that young woman," as they always spoke of her in Avonsbridge.

What Dr. Grey had gone through in domestic opposition before he married, he alone knew, and he never told. But he had said, as every man under similar circumstances has a right to say, "I will marry," and had done it. Besides, he was a just man; he was fully aware that to his sisters Christian was not—could not be as yet, any more than the organist's daughter and the silversmith's governess, while they were University ladies. But he knew them, and he knew her; he was not afraid.

They were a strong contrast, these two, the