She remained stolidly silent throughout the meal, but Cornelia apparently regarded he attitude as a tactful abdication in her own favour, and kept up an incessant flow of conversation from start to finish. When the bell was rung for prayers, she seated herself in a low chair, directly facing the servants' seats, and smiled a dazzling greeting to each in turn. They sat down in their usual positions, heads bent, hands folded on the middle of their clean white aprons; feet tucked carefully out of sight; there was no outward sign of irreverence or inattention in their demeanour, but Miss Briskett _felt_, that every single woman of them was absorbed--utterly, consumedly absorbed--in casting sly glances at that distracting white vision in the easy chair; at the dully glowing hair, the floating folds of white, the tiny, extended feet. She might have read a page of the dictionary, and they would not have noticed; even Heap, who was old enough to know better, was edging sideways in her chair, to get a better view! When the four stiffly-starched dresses had rustled out of the room, Cornelia yawned, and stretched herself like a sleepy, luxurious kitten, then snoodled down once more in her comfortable chair. Her eyes were fixed upon her aunt's face, while that good lady bustled about the room, folding the newspaper into an accurate square, and putting it away in a brass-bound cage; collecting scattered envelopes and putting them in the waste-paper basket, moving the flower-vases on the chimney-piece, so that they should stand at mathematically the same distance from the central clock. At every movement she waited to hear the expected, "Can I help you, Aunt Sophia?" which right feeling would surely prompt in any well-principled damsel, and though her reply would of a certainty have been in the negative, she felt aggrieved that the opportunity was not vouchsafed. She was determined not to look in the girl's direction, nor to meet those watching eyes, but presently, in spite of herself, she felt a magnetic compulsion to turn her head to answer the bright, expectant glance. "Well?" queried Cornelia, smiling. "Well what, my dear?" "How are you going to amuse me this forenoon?" Miss Briskett sat down suddenly in the nearest chair, and suffered a mental collapse. Positively this view of the situation had never once dawned upon her unimaginative brain! Mrs Ramsden had dimly wrestled with the problem, solving it at last with an easy, "She can talk to Elma!" but the aunt and hostess had been too much occupied with consideration for her own comfort to think of anyone else. It had crossed her mind that the girl might tire her, bore her, worry her, or humiliate her before the neighbours; in an occasional giddy flight of fancy she had even supposed it possible that Cornelia might amuse her, and make life more agreeable, but never for the fraction of a second had she realised that she herself was fated either to bore, or to amuse Cornelia in return!