opinion. Why, it would be rather difficult to define, except, perhaps, that as a matron she acted powerfully and sustainingly on these spinster and bachelor minds. Whatever occurred to any of them, was immediately laid before Mrs. Gillett to decide upon; she was the repository of all their secrets, and, strange to say, never betrayed one to the other; she heard all, kept all, and agreed with all—consequently her position was both difficult and dangerous. Sometimes she met with an unforeseen rock, one of those we not unfrequently may have been called upon to pass over on the beach going to or from a boat at low tide, covered with seaweed, wet, slippery, and full of holes, in which the sea water has lodged. Well, over one like this Mrs. Gillett often had to pass; she slid right and left, sometimes her shoes filled with water as she stepped into a hole; at one moment she was nearly falling into the sea, but somehow Mrs. Gillett got safe to the end of the rock, dripping and uncomfortable 'tis true; but she gained her boat, and put out to sea, the oars at full play, and the sail at the prow, like snow in the sun, all 'taut,' as sailors say, and 'bellying out' gallantly before the wind. To sum up her character in a few words, she was the essence of a thousand weathercocks infused into one. Even Minnie owned a sort of deference for this busily employed dame; but this was scarcely to be wondered at, it had grown up with her, and been originally engrafted on her childish mind by means common and pleasant to childhood—namely, sweetmeats and sugarplums. Mrs. Gillett had the very snuggest housekeeper's room in the world, looking into the extensive kitchen-gardens at the back of the hall, and thither flocked her votaries. She was a woman of nearly sixty, but robust and active; no modern fashion had disturbed her style of dress; her 'gownd,' as she still termed it, was three-quarters high, the gathers behind were set out by what old-fashioned ladies term 'a pad,' that is, a thing like a quarter of a yard cut off a sand-bag at the bottom of a door; the whitest muslin handkerchief in the world was pinned across her well-conditioned bust, confined close to the throat by a brooch set round with pearls, containing a lock of the defunct Mr. Gillett's hair; her cap was of lace like snow, high-crowned, ribbonless, but with broad lace strings pinned exactly in the centre by another brooch smaller than the first—a sort of a hoop, the first, as she told every one, that she had ever possessed. Storr and Mortimer might not admire it, but she did. A white apron completed this attire, not a Frenchified thing with pockets, but a genuine old English one, gored and sloped, perfectly tight all round. As she sat in her high-backed chair giving audience to her visiters, she was a picture. She was the only person who had advocated the cause of matrimony to Juvenal—it was dreadful to her the idea of the old place passing away to another branch of the family. When her bones had been more capable of locomotion, she had visited all the neighbouring housekeepers for miles, on some pretext or another, to find a wife for Juvenal—but in vain. His bent was not matrimony for himself, and he cared but little who should inhabit Gatestone after his death. His sisters were strangely indifferent, too; they did not like the place especially, and, should they survive him, proposed residing on a small property of their own near Scarborough. Thus all their united energies were directed towards the settlement of their niece. She was their plaything, just as her poor mother had been eighteen years before. Mrs. Gillett's advice was perfectly conscientious when given; she only thought of the immediate case before her, without reference to any other prior claim which might have been made on her attention. Unlike Lot's wife, she never looked back; consequently, had all followed her counsel, a strange confusion would necessarily have ensued, where all were bent on the same thing—to marry Minnie, and each to his or her favourite. She sat in state, her hands crossed over her portly figure as she leaned back in her chair, and before her sat Juvenal.

CHAPTER III.

"Just so, Mrs. Gillett," he said; "just as you say. I am not treated like the master in my own house; no one consults or obeys me. As for my niece, she opposes me in every possible way!"

"Oh! that's a pity, I'm sure," said the commiserating listener, shaking her head; "that shouldn't be, you know: it's very wrong."

"So I tell her," continued he, "but she persists in it, and unhesitatingly insults Marmaduke Burton before my face—something about some trees; I don't exactly know what she meant, but he did, and walked away quite offended."

"Trees?" asked Gillett, musingly; "trees? Ay, that must be it! When Squire Burton came to the property, he was much in debt, they said, and he cut down a lot of fine old oaks about the place: don't you call it to mind, sir?"

"To be sure I do," he answered, his hair almost on end at this solution of Minnie's riddle—"What a wicked thing for a girl of her age to say, on purpose to hurt his feelings, and I was so anxious for the match!"

"I've always remarked," rejoined his companion, dropping her words one by one sententiously, "that the children of military men have more devil in them than others, more quarrelsome-like; depend upon it, 'tis what they're brought up with." She spoke as if they were young cannibals, fed upon the trophies of war around a blazing fire; as, says an old song there, "Where my forefathers feasted on the blood of Christians."

"Very likely!" ejaculated Juvenal, who was growing prosy and stultified by her reasonings, and his own over-thinking.

"And yet her father was a poor, maimed, one-armed man after all, not at all like a soldier. I often wondered how Baby, poor child, could love him!"

Juvenal evidently thought that a son of Mars should, literally and of necessity, be a man of arms. "But what's to be done with Minnie?" he uttered thoughtfully. "It would be very dreadful were she to marry the poor curate, or even the lawyer; for her own fortune is a mere trifle. Almost all her mother's portion was spent in paying off Dalzell's debts. I am living, and am obliged to live, quite up to my income; her aunts can give her nothing until their death. What is to be done, Mrs. Gillett? pray, advise me how to act?"

"I'd lock her up," whispered Gillett, "and not let her see any one else."

"But myself?" he asked; "what good would that do?"

"No, not you—the squire. Don't let her go about with her aunts. One wants the lawyer to have her; t'other, the parson. Lock her up; it's just the way to tame a high spirit, and make her like the man!"

"Well, so I've thought too, Mrs. Gillett, but there would be a dreadful outcry were I to attempt it. How is it to be done?"

"Well, give her, say a month, to decide; and if she don't say Yes, then do it, and she'll soon come to. You are her guardian, and have a right to know what's best for her."

"So I will! so I will! your reasoning is most excellent; but don't give a hint to my sisters, or I shall have my scheme frustrated."

"Not for the world, sir; and I again beg of you not to name my advice to any one, or I shall lose all the confidence of the others."

"Rest perfectly satisfied, Mrs. Gillett; I have too sincere a respect for your excellent counsels, to risk the loss of them owing to any fault of mine;" and he whispered, rising, "Don't let any of them know I have consulted you."

This the dame cheerfully promised, and she faithfully kept her word. To do her justice, Mrs. Gillett meant no harm—far from it. If, in the almost torpid indifference of her heart towards others, there arose sometimes another feeling, it was certainly to do good, not evil; but there was predominant above all else, the love, the ambition of domination, that heaven to the narrow-minded—she held the reins of government of all; this was her glory, not