But Martha deposited the lamp and quietly retired. Now, Marion could see her aunt plainly. There was not very much to see. A withered face with some remains of former good looks, but none of the more lasting loveliness of sweet expression; or the rare but unsurpassed beauty of a tender, loving old age. A graceful figure had in her young days been one of Miss Tremlett’s attractions, and this she still imagined that she possessed. In consequence of which somewhat mistaken notion, for the former sylph-like slightness was now rather to be described as scragginess and angularity, she was fussy to a degree about the make and fit of her dresses. A wrinkle drove her frantic, and though her days were principally spent on the sofa, the slightest crease or rumple in her attire altogether upset her never-very-firmly-established equanimity. She wore a light brown “front” surmounted by a cap of marvellous construction, so precise and stiff in its appearance that till you touched it you could hardly believe it to consist of anything so soft and ethereal as lace. Miss Tremlett had one art in perfection altogether peculiar to herself that of lying on a sofa without the slightest appearance of ease or repose: she made you feel somehow as if, all the time instead of reclining on a couch, she was sitting bolt upright on the stiffest of high backed chairs. As Marion drew near her, she held out her hand, and permitted, rather than invited, her to kiss her cheek. Geoffrey wished he could have bitten her, instead. “Your cloak is not damp, I hope?” she exclaimed; and as Marion was about to express her thanks for the unexpected anxiety on her behalf, she went on, “if it is the least damp, you had better not stand so near me, I am so sensitive to the slightest damp or cold.” On which Marion timidly suggested that perhaps she had better change it at once, if Miss Tremlett would be so good as tell her which was to be her room. “Evans, our housekeeper, is with me,” she added, more and more timidly, as she observed the expression of her aunt’s face, “but only for one night. She is going on tomorrow to visit her mother before her marriage.” “You don’t mean to say that old woman is going to be married!” exclaimed Miss Tremlett, in a less unpleasant tone than Marion had yet heard. “Evans is, not her mother,” replied the girl. “Of course I never supposed you meant the mother,” said she elder lady snappishly. “The mother is eighty, and paralysed. I call Evans herself an old woman, and a very silly old woman too, by what you tell me. I really don’t know where she can sleep. I had no idea of you bringing any one with you. You must speak to Martha; she will show you your own room. It will be tea time in an hour, till then I must rest. Good evening. Mr. Baldwin,” as Geoffrey showed symptoms of retiring, “I should be so much obliged to you if you would remember to shut the door.”