Arthur pulled an insolent face, at which his aunt rose up and boxed his ears. This sort of scene had been familiar enough to Christian in the early days of her marriage. It always made her unhappy, but she attempted no resistance. Either she felt no right or she had no courage. Now, things were different. She caught Miss Gascoigne's uplifted hand, and Arthur's, already raised to return the blow. "Stop! you must not touch that child. And, Arthur, how can you be so naughty! Beg your aunt's pardon, immediately!" But Arthur began to sob and cough--that ominous cough which was their dread and pain still. It did not touch the heart of Aunt Henrietta. "We shall see who is mistress here. I will at once send for Dr. Grey. Maria, ring the bell." Poor Aunt Maria, the most subservient of women, was about to do it, when fate interfered in the shape of Barker and a visiting card, which changed the whole current of Miss Gascoigne's intentions. "Sir Edwin Uniacke! the very gentleman I was speaking of. I shall be delighted to see him. Show him up immediately." Which was needless, for he had followed Barker to the door. There he stood, a graceful, well-appointed, fashionable young man, with not a hair awry in his black curls, not a shadow on his handsome face, perfectly satisfied with himself and his fortunes--a little flushed, perhaps, it might be, with what he would call the "pluckiness" of coming thus to "beard the lion in his den," to visit the master of his late college. All men have some good in them, and the good in this man was, that, if a scapegrace, he was not a weak villain, not a coward. "How kind of you! I am delighted to find a young gentleman so punctual in his engagements with an old woman," said Miss Gascoigne, with mingled dignity and _empressement._ "Sir Edwin Uniacke, my sister, Miss Grey; Mrs. Grey, my sister-in-law." Certainly Aunt Henrietta's "manners" were superb. Arthur lay crying and coughing still, but his luckless condition before visitors was covered over by these beautiful manners, and by the flow of small-talk which at once began, and in which it was difficult to say who carried off the position best, the young man or the elderly woman. Both deserved equal credit from that "world" to which they both belonged. Presently a diversion was created by Christian's rising to carry Arthur away. "You need not go," said Miss Gascoigne. "Ring for Phillis. The child has been ill, Sir Edwin, and Mrs. Grey has made herself a perfect slave to him." "How very--ahem!--charming!" said Sir Edwin Uniacke. Phillis appeared, but Arthur clung tighter than ever to his step-mother's neck. Nor did she wish to release him. "I thank you, no. I can carry him quite easily," she replied to Sir Edwin's politely offered help, which was, indeed, the only sentence she had attempted to exchange with him. With her boy in her arms she quitted the room, and did not return thither all the afternoon.