Most of the callers had paid their 'duty visits' at a time of the afternoon when she was always out,--roaming over her own woods and fields, and 'taking stock' as she said, of her own possessions,--but on one or two occasions she had been caught 'in,' and this was the case when Sir Morton Pippitt, accompanied by his daughter Tabitha, Mr. Julian Adderley, and Mr. Marius Longford were announced just at the apt and fitting hour of 'five-o'clock tea.' Rising from the chair where she had negligently thrown herself to read for a quiet half hour, she set aside her book, and received those important personages with the careless ease and amiable indifference which was a 'manner familiar' to her, and which invariably succeeded in making less graceful persons than she was, feel wretchedly awkward and unhappy about the management of their hands and feet. With a smiling upward and downward glance, she mastered Sir Morton Pippitt's 'striking and jovial personality,'--his stiffly-carried upright form, large lower chest, close-shaven red face, and pleasantly clean white hair,--"The very picture of a Bone-Melter"--she thought--"He looks as if he had been boiled all over himself--quite a nice well- washed old man,"--her observant eyes flashed over the attenuated form of Julian Adderley with a sparkle of humour,--she noticed the careful carelessness of his attire, the artistic 'set' of his ruddy locks, the eccentric cut of his trousers, and the, to himself, peculiar knot of his tie. "The poor thing wants to be something out of the common and can't quite manage it," she mentally decided, while she viewed with extreme disfavour the feline elegance affected by Mr. Marius Longford, and the sleek smile, practised by him 'for women only,' with which he blandly admitted her existence. To Miss Tabitha Pippit she offered a chair of capacious dimensions, amply provided with large down cushons, inviting her to sit down in it with a gentleness which implied kindly consideration for her years and for the fatigue she might possibly experience as a result of the drive over from Badsworth Hall,--whereat the severe spinster's chronically red nose reddened more visibly, and between her thin lips she sharply enunciated her preference for 'a higher seat,--no cushions, thank you!' Thereupon she selected the 'higher seat' for herself, in the shape of an old-fashioned music-stool, without back or arm-rest, and sat stiffly upon it like a draper's clothed dummy put up in a window for public inspection. Maryllia smiled,--she knew that kind of woman well;--and paying only the most casual attention to her for the rest of the time, returned to her own place by the open windows and began to dispense the tea, while Sir Morton Pippitt opened conversation by feigning to recall having met her some two or three years back. He was not altogether in the best of humours, the sight of his recently dismissed butler, Primmins, having upset his nerves. He knew how