When you have known a woman as long as I had known my aunt, there are sometimes hints or warnings in her most casual expressions. When my aunt said I was not wanted that evening I knew at once that she was meditating something out of the common, but just what, I did not think to ask myself. My Aunt Gainor was all her life fond of what she called inventing chances, a fine phrase, of which she was proud. In fact, this sturdy old spinster liked to interfere authoritatively in the affairs of men and women, and believed that for this she had a special talent, which in fact she discovered no inclination to bury; but what now she had in hand to do I knew not. She was deeply grieved for a season to find that her plans went awry, or that men were disappointed, or that women would not go her way. “When she hurts you,” said Mrs. Ferguson, “she is like a child, and has a dozen silly devices for doctoring your wounds. We have fought many times, and made up as often. There is no real malice in her,” which was true. Jack Warder once remarked in his lively way that Mistress Wynne had a richly coloured character. I fear it may have looked at times very black to some and very rose-tinted to others, but assuredly never gray in its tones, nor other than positive. With me she took all manner of liberties, and with Darthea too, and if ever she were in doubt if it were well to meddle in our affairs I know not. A vast richness of human love and an urgent desire of rule lay underneath the life she showed the outer world of quadrille and dinners and gossip. When she hurt us, or, as Darthea said, broke her china in trying to wash it, she fell back on our love with a quite childlike astonishment that what was come out of affection should give rise to resentment. With a slight puzzle in my mind I went away with Delaney to dine at the London Coffee-house, which now showed our own new flag, where so often I had passed in under the cross of St. George. “We have a new St. George now,” said Mr. John Adams, in one of those ill-natured letters to Dr. Rush which filled my aunt with rage. “_Sancte Washington, ora pro nobis._” The Massachusetts statesman admired _our_ grave and knightly St. George, but there are those who cannot fly a kite without the bobtail of a sneer--which is good wit, I think, but not my own; it was Jack said that. When Delaney left me to call again upon my aunt, I little dreamed of what part she meant him to play. He left the town early next day, and had it not been for Jack I should not for a long while have known fully what an hour brought forth.