Harrington Vizard, Esq., smoked on, with his back to the group. But the rest were a picture--the mutinous face and keen eyes of Fanny Dover, bristling with defense, at the window; Zoe blushing crimson, and newly started away from her too-enterprising wooer; and the tall, thin, grim old maid, standing stiff, as sentinel, at the bedroom door, and gimleting both her charges alternately with steel-gray orbs; she seemed like an owl, all eyes and beak. When the chaperon had fixed the situation thoroughly, she stalked erect into the room, and said, very expressively, “I am afraid I disturb you.” Zoe, from crimson, blushed scarlet, and hung her head; but Fanny was ready. “La! aunt,” said she, ironically, and with pertness infinite, “you know you are always welcome. Where ever have you been all this time? We were afraid we had lost you.” Aunt fired her pistol in reply: “I was not far off--most fortunately.” Zoe, finding that, even under crushing circumstances, Fanny had fight in her, glided instantly to her side, and Aunt Maitland opened battle all round. “May I ask, sir,” said she to Severne, with a horrible smile, “what you were doing when I came in?” Zoe clutched Fanny, and both awaited Mr. Severne's reply for one moment with keen anxiety. “My dear Miss Maitland,” said that able young man, very respectfully, yet with a sort of cheerful readiness, as if he were delighted at her deigning to question him, “to tell you the truth, I was admiring Miss Vizard's diamond ring.” Fanny tittered; Zoe blushed again at such a fib and such _aplomb._ “Oh, indeed,” said Miss Maitland; “you were admiring it very close, sir.” “It is like herself--it will bear inspection.” This was wormwood to Miss Maitland. “Even in our ashes live their wonted fires;” and, though she was sixty, she disliked to hear a young woman praised. She bridled, then returned to the attack. “Next time you wish to inspect it, you had better ask her _to take it off,_ and show you.” “May I, Miss Maitland?” inquired the ingenuous youth. “She would not think that a liberty?” His mild effrontery staggered her for a moment, and she glared at him, speechless, but soon recovered, and said, bitterly, “Evidently _not.”_ With this she turned her back on him rather ungraciously, and opened fire on her own sex. “Zoe!” (sharply). “Yes, aunt.” (faintly) “Tell your brother--if he can leave off smoking--I wish to speak to him.” Zoe hung her head, and was in no hurry to bring about the proposed conference. While she deliberated, says Fanny, with vast alacrity, “I'll tell him, aunt.” “Oh, Fanny!” murmured Zoe, in a reproachful whisper. “All right!” whispered Fanny in reply, and whipped out on to the balcony. “Here's Aunt Maitland wants to know if you ever leave off smoking;” and she threw a most aggressive manner into the query. The big man replied, composedly, “Tell her I do--at meals and prayers; but I always _sleep_ with a pipe in my mouth--heavily insured!”