Is it that women have some shrewd perception of character denied to men? Certainly Darby never imposed on Miss Barrington. She read him like a book, and he felt it. The consequence was a very cordial dislike, which strengthened with every year of their acquaintance. Though Miss Barrington ever believed that the notion of keeping an inn originated with her brother, it was Darby first conceived the project, and, indeed, by his own skill and crafty intelligence was it carried on; and while the words “Peter Barrington” figured in very small letters, it is true, over the door to comply with a legal necessity, to most of the visitors he was a mere myth. Now, if Peter Barrington was very happy to be represented by deputy,--or, better still, not represented at all,--Miss Dinah regarded the matter in a very different light. Her theory was that, in accepting the humble station to which reverse of fortune brought them, the world ought to see all the heroism and courage of the sacrifice. She insisted on being a foreground figure, just to show them, as she said, “that I take nothing upon me. I am the hostess of a little wayside inn,--no more!” How little did she know of her own heart, and how far was she from even suspecting that it was the _ci-devant_ belle making one last throw for the admiration and homage which once were offered her freely. Such were the three chief personages who dwelt under that secluded roof, half overgrown with honeysuckle and dog-roses,--specimens of that wider world without, where jealousies, and distrusts, and petty rivalries are warring: for as in one tiny globule of water are represented the elements which make oceans and seas, so is it in the moral world; and “the family” is only humanity, as the artists say, “reduced.” For years back Miss Barrington had been plotting to depose Darby. With an ingenuity quite feminine, she managed to connect him with every chagrin that crossed and every annoyance that befell them. If the pig ploughed up the new peas in the garden, it was Darby had left the gate open; it was _his_ hand overwound the clock; and a very significant hint showed that when the thunder soured the beer, Mr. Darby knew more of the matter than he was likely to tell. Against such charges as these, iterated and reiterated to satiety, Barrington would reply by a smile, or a good-natured excuse, or a mere gesture to suggest patience, till his sister, fairly worn out, resolved on another line of action. “As she could not banish the rats,” to use her own words, “she would scuttle the ship.”