ladies at the Lodge. Miss Grey, the elder, was a little roly-poly woman, with a meek, round, fair- complexioned face, and pulpy soft-hands—one of those people who irresistibly remind one of a white mouse. She was neither clever nor wise, but she was very sweet-tempered. She had loved Dr. Grey all her life. From the time that she, a big girl, had dandled him, a baby, in her lap; throughout her brief youth, when she was engaged to young Mr. Gascoigne, who died; up to her somewhat silly and helpless middle- age, there never was anybody, to Miss Grey, like "my brother Arnold." Faithfulness is a rare virtue; let us criticise her no more, but pass her over, faults and all.

Miss Gascoigne was a lady who could not be passed over on any account. Nothing would have so seriously offended her. From her high nose to her high voice and her particularly high temper, every thing about her was decidedly prononcé. There was no extinguishing her or putting her into a corner. Rather than be unnoticed—if such a thing she could ever believe possible—she would make herself noticeable in any way, even in an ill way. She was a good-looking woman, and a clever woman too, only not quite clever enough to find out one slight fact—that there might be any body in the world superior to herself.

    "Set down your value at your own huge rate,
     The world will pay it"

—for a time. And so the world had paid it pretty well to Miss
Gascoigne, but was beginning a little to weary of her; except fond Miss
Grey, who still thought that, as there never was a man like "dear
Arnold," so there was not a woman any where to compare with "dear
Henrietta."

There is always something pathetic in this sort of alliance between two single women unconnected by blood. It implies a substitution for better things—marriage or kindred ties; and has in some cases a narrowing tendency. No two people, not even married people, can live alone together for a number of years without sinking into a sort of double selfishness, ministering to one another's fancies, humors, and even faults in a way that is not possible, or probable, in the wider or wholesomer life of a family. And if, as is almost invariably the case— indeed otherwise such a tie between women could not long exist—the stronger governs the weaker, one domineers and the other obeys, the result is bad for both. It might be seen in the fidgety restlessness of Miss Gascoigne, whose eyes, still full of passionate fire, lent a painful youthfulness to her faded face, and in the lazy supineness of Miss Grey, who seemed never to have an opinion or a thought of her own. This was the dark side of the picture; the bright side being that it is perfectly impossible for two women, especially single women, to live together, in friendship and harmony, for nearly twenty years, without a firm basis of moral worth existing in their characters, producing a fidelity of regard which is not only touching, but honorable to both.

They sat, one on either side the fire, in the long unbroken silence of people who are so used to one another that they feel no necessity for talking, until Miss Gascoigne spoke first, as she always did.

"I wonder what Dr. Grey meant by desiring the children to be kept out of their beds till his return. As if I should allow it! And to order a tea-dinner! No wonder Barker looked astonished! He never knew my poor sister have anything but a proper dinner, at the proper hour; but it's just that young woman's doing. In her position, of course she always dined at one o'clock."

"Very likely," said Miss Grey, assentingly. Dissent she never did, in any thing, from any body, least of all from Miss Gascoigne.

That lady fidgeted again, poked the fire, regarded herself in the mirror, and settled her cap—no, her head-dress, for Miss Grey always insisted that "dear Henrietta" was too young to wear caps, and admired fervently the still black—too black hair, the mystery of which was only known to Henrietta herself.

"What o'clock is it? half-past nine, I declare. Most annoying—most impertinent—to keep us waiting for our tea in this way. Your brother never did it before."

"I hope there is no accident," said Miss Grey, looking up alarmed.
"The snow might be dangerous on the railway."

"Maria, if you had any sense—but I think you have less and less every day—you would remember that they are not coming by rail at all—of course not. On the very first day of term, when Dr. Grey would meet so many people he knew to have to introduce his wife! Why, everybody would have laughed at him; and no wonder. Verily, there's no fool like an old fool."

"Henrietta!" pitifully appealed the sister, "you know dear Arnold is not a fool. He never did a foolish thing in his life, except, perhaps, in making this unfortunate marriage. And she may improve. Any body ought to improve who had the advantage of living constantly with dear Arnold."

Miss Gascoigne, always on the watch for affronts, turning sharply round, but there was not a shadow of satire in her friend's simplicity. "My dear Maria, you are the greatest—"

But what Miss Grey was remained among the few bitter speeches that Miss Gascoigne left unsaid, for at that moment the heavy oak door was thrown wide open, and Barker, the butler (time-honored institution of Saint Bede's, who thought himself one of its strongest pillars of support), repeated, in his sonorous voice,

"The master and Mrs. Grey."

Thus announced—suddenly and formally, like a stranger, in her own house—Christian came home.

The two maiden aunts rose ceremoniously. Either their politeness sprang from their natural habit of good-breeding, or it was wrung from them by extreme surprise. The apparition before them—tall, graceful, and dignified—could by no means be mistaken for any thing but a lady—such a lady as Avonsbridge, with all its aristocracy of birth and condition, rarely produced. She would have been the same even if attired in hodden gray, but now she was well-dressed in silks and furs. Dr. Grey had smiled at the modest trousseau, and soon settled every thing by saying, "My wife must wear so and so." In this rich clothing, which set off her fair large Saxon beauty to the utmost advantage, Christian quite dazzled the eyes of the two ladies who had so persistently called her "that young woman." Any person with eyes at all could see that, except for the difference in age, there was not the slightest incongruity between (to follow Barker's pompous announcement) "the master and Mrs. Grey."

Dr. Grey's personal introduction was brief enough: "Christian, these are my sisters. This is Maria, and this is Henrietta—Miss Gascoigne."

Christian bowed—a little stately, perhaps—and then held out her hand, which, after a hesitating glance at Miss Gascoigne, was accepted timidly by Miss Grey. "I couldn't help it, my dear" she afterward pleaded, in answer to a severe scolding; "she quite took me by surprise."

But in Miss Gascoigne's acuter and more worldly nature the surprise soon wore off, leaving a sharp consciousness of the beauty, grace and dignity—formidable weapons in the hands of any woman, and especially of one so young as the master's wife. Not that her youth was now very noticeable; to any one who had known Christian before her marriage, she would have appeared greatly altered, as if some strange mental convulsion had passed over her—passed, and been subdued. In two weeks she had grown ten years older—was, a matron, not a girl. Yet still she was herself. We often come to learn that change—which includes growth—is one of the most blessed laws in existence; but it is only weak natures