Rose McDougall was one of those persons who prefer animosity to indifference. That any one should simply not care about her was a suggestion so intolerable that she was wont to declare of persons who did not show any special desire for her society, that they hated her. She was sure Mr. A. detested the sight of her, and Miss B. was her bitter enemy. But, perhaps, in Algernon's case, she had more reason for declaring he disliked her than in many others. He did in truth object to the sort of influence she exercised over Castalia. He knew that Castalia was insatiably curious about even the most trifling details of his past life in Whitford; and he knew that Miss McDougall was very capable of misrepresenting--even of innocently misrepresenting--many circumstances and persons in such a way as to irritate Castalia's easily-aroused jealousy; and Castalia's easily-aroused jealousy was an element of discomfort in his daily life. In a word, there had arisen since his marriage a smouldering sort of hostility between him and Rose McDougall. But he was far from conceiving the acrid nature of her feelings towards him. For his part, he laughed at her a little in a playful way, and contradicted her, and, above all, he did not permit her to bore him by exacting any attention from him which he was disinclined to pay. But there was no bitterness in all that. None in the world! Only he did not reckon on the bitterness excited in Miss Rose's breast by being laughed at and neglected. The graceful and charming way in which the laughter and neglect were accomplished by no means mollified the sting of them; a point which graceful and charming persons would do well sometimes to consider, but to which they are often singularly blind. "And what have you been doing with yourself all day, Castalia dear?" asked Violet with a great display of affection. "Oh--what can one do with oneself in this horrid hole?" "To be sure!" responded Violet. But she responded rather uncertainly. To her, Whitford seemed by no means a horrid hole. She had been content enough to live there for many years--ever since her uncle had brought her and her sister from Scotland in their mourning clothes, and received his orphan nieces into his home. "Don't speak of it, my dear!" exclaimed Rose, on whom the reminiscences of the years spent in Whitford wrought by no means a softening effect. "What possessed Uncle James to stick himself down in this place, of all places, I cannot conjecture. He might as well have buried us girls alive at once." "Oh, well, I suppose you have had time enough to get used to it," said Castalia, coolly. "Violet, will you ring the bell? It is close to you. Thank you.--Lydia," when the girl appeared, "where is your master?" "In the dining-room, ma'am." "What is he doing?" "Smoking and reading, ma'am." "Go and ask him to come here, with my love." "How the woman worrits him! She doesn't leave him a minute's peace," was Lydia's comment to the cook on this embassy.