They were in the hall by this time, and Mrs. Tiffe stood waiting to greet her new mistress, her black silk rustling at every step and her yellow lace showing age and cost, as with her gold-bowed glasses in her hand and her bunch of keys jingling suggestively on the chain at her side, she paid her respects to madame, and thought as she did so how she would like to thrash the scapegrace, Godfrey, who had so misled them. He was choking with laughter just outside the door, where his sisters were going through with a pantomime of threatening gestures for the trick played upon them. “Godfrey Schuyler, how could you?” Julia began in a whisper, while Godfrey suddenly remembering that he had not seen his Aunt Christine, stepped back into the hall and asked where she was. On being told she had a headache, he said: “I must go up and see her,” and with a sign for Julia and Alice to follow, he ran up the stairs in the direction of Miss Rossiter’s room. But Emma was there before them. As soon as the first moment of amazement was over she had gone swiftly to her aunt’s chamber, and rushing in unannounced, had exclaimed: “Oh, Aunt Christine, she is the most beautiful woman you ever looked upon. It was all a fib he wrote us. She is splendid and hasn’t a bit of a limp nor anything, and looks about twenty. Do get up, auntie, and go to dinner.” Miss Rossiter was amazed, and sitting up on the side of her bed, was trying to knot her long black hair under her net, while she put some questions to Emma, when the door burst open a second time, and Godfrey himself came in full of life, and health, and vigor, and by his very presence doing more to dissipate the lady’s headache than all the drugs in her closet. “Hallo, Aunt Christine,” he said; “done up in camphor and herbs, as usual? Let’s try what a little exercise will do for you.” And taking her in his arms he waltzed gayly about the room, the girls laughing and the lady protesting and struggling to get free, until she had danced her hair down and a bright color into her face. “There, auntie, you are real handsome now,” Godfrey said, as he released her with a hearty kiss, and leading her to the couch, seated himself beside her, with his arm around her waist. “Now, girls, pitch in; I’m ready for you,” he said; as they began to accuse him of deceit in its most aggravating form, asking how he could do it. “Do what?” he asked. “What are you making such a fuss about?” “I should think you’d ask,” Julia replied. “Telling us she was forty and had a glass eye, and a squawk in her voice, and everything else that is bad.” “I never told you any such thing,” Godfrey answered, with great gravity; and the three girls exclaimed, in chorus: “Oh, Godfrey Schuyler! You did, you did. We have the letter. You wrote, ‘Think of father’s marrying a woman of forty with a glass eye, and——’”