‘Sit down, and be quiet, Spilling,’ said Miss Glenlyne. ‘I daresay you and my niece will get on very well together. And her arrival won’t make any difference in what I intended to do for you.’ ‘What I intended to do,’ sounded vague. Miss Spilling had hoped the intention was long ago set down in black and white—made as much a fact as it could be before Miss Glenlyne’s decease. She gave another sniff at her salts-bottle, and sat down, meek but not hopeful. This liking for youthful faces was one of her employer’s weaknesses, against which she had brought to bear all the art she knew. For fifteen years she had contrived to keep pleasant people and youthful faces for the most part outside any house occupied by Miss Glenlyne. That lady had descended the vale of years in company with pilgrims almost as travel-worn and as near the end of the journey as herself: no reflected light from the countenances of younger travellers had been permitted to shine upon her. Kensal-green and Doctors’-commons—all images that symbolise approaching death—had been kept rigorously before her. Youth had been represented to her as the period of deceit and ingratitude. If any young person, by some fortuitous means, did ever penetrate her seclusion, Miss Spilling immediately discovered that young person to be a viper in disguise—a reptile which would warm itself at Miss Glenlyne’s hearth, only to sting its benefactress. And Miss Glenlyne, always uncomfortably conscious that she had money to bequeath, and that humanity is sometimes mercenary, had discarded one acquaintance after another, at the counsel of Miss Spilling, until she found herself in extreme old age with no companionship save the somewhat doleful society of her counsellor. It was wonderful how brisk and light the old lady became in her niece’s company. She made Lucille sit next her, and patted the girl’s hand with her withered fingers, on which the rings rattled loosely, and asked her all manner of questions about her childhood and her schooldays, her accomplishments, her vague memory of mother and father. ‘I’ve a portrait of your father in the dining-room,’ she said; ‘you shall go down and look at it by and by.’ Lucius returned with Janet, whom Miss Glenlyne welcomed with much cordiality, evidently struck by the beauty of that noble face which had beguiled Geoffrey Hossack into that not-uncommon folly called love at first sight. The little dinner in the back drawing-room was a most cheerful banquet, in spite of Miss Spilling, who presided grimly over the dish of chops, and looked the daggers which she dared not use. Miss Glenlyne even called for a bottle of champagne, whereupon Miss Spilling reluctantly withdrew to fetch that wine from the cellaret in the dining-room. Unwelcome as was the task, she was glad of the opportunity to retire, that she might vent her grief and indignation in a series of sniffs, groans, and snorts, which seemed to afford her burdened spirit some relief.