work, and what one could do to make a place for one’s self, who had positively determined not to be indebted for one’s position to one’s husband. Such was the peculiar atmosphere out of which Alice Harley revealed herself to the common world. She was deeply scornful of that talk about people which pleased my boy so much, and so severe upon gossip and gossips, that I had on more than one occasion seriously to defend myself. There she stood in her dark-brown silk dress beside little Clara’s flowing toilette and vivacious nursery talk, casting a shadow upon pale Miss Polly in her crimson satin. Alice was as much unlike that tender old soul, with her old maidenly restraints and preciseness, her unbounded old womanly indulgence and kindness, as she was unlike her matronly younger sister; and I confess that to myself, in all her perverseness, knowing as I did what a genuine heart lay below, there was quite a charm of her own about the unmarried woman. She was so conscious of her staid and sober age, so unconscious of her pleasant youth, and the simplicity which, all unknown to herself, lay in her wisdom. Such was my Alice; the same Alice who, keeping silent and keeping her brothers and sisters quiet in the nursery, while she knew her father lay dying many a long year ago, adjured me with unspeakable childish pathos--“Oh, don’t be sorry for me! I mustn’t cry!” I do not know how it was that, while I contemplated Alice on her first appearance with a kind of retrospective glance at her history, there suddenly appeared above her the head of Mr. Reredos. He was a middle-sized, handsome man, with a pale complexion and dark hair--very gentlemanly, people said--a man who preached well, talked well, and looked well, and who, even to my eyes, which were no way partial, had no particular defect worth noticing, if it were not the soft, large, white hands without any bones in them, which held your fingers in a warm, velvety clasp when you shook hands with the new rector. I don’t know how he had managed to come in without my perceiving him. And strong must have been the attraction which beguiled Mr. Reredos to neglect the duty of paying his respects to his hostess, even for five minutes. It was not five minutes, however, before he recollected himself, and came with his soft white hand and his sister on his arm. His sister was so far like himself that she was very pale, with very black hair, and an “interesting” look. She did not interest me very much; but I could not help hoping that perhaps in this sentimental heroine Maurice Harley, for the time being, might meet his fate. I thought that would be rather a comfortable way of shelving those members of our party; for Maurice, though he was a very fine gentleman, not to say Fellow of his College, afflicted my soul with a constant inclination to commit a personal assault upon him, and have him whipped and sent to bed.