"Dear, dear, dear!" she exclaimed; "it's of no use, and I can't hear a bit. I might just as well have stayed where I was. O Arty, Arty, you sad boy, why will you mumble so?" Arty did not mumble any more that evening, but dashed headlong into his discourse; so that when they returned, Aunt Fanny thought she rather liked the new seat the better of the two. Still it was of no avail; the old lady could never hear well in that church; for rector and curate had both got into a bad habit of speaking in a low tone, and drawling out their words. But Aunt Fanny's pity was sublime in the case of a friend also troubled with deafness; though he knew it, and did not scruple to make an ear-trumpet of his hand, though this was needless when Aunt Fanny was the speaker; for her sentences were always perfectly audible. "Poor Edwards!" she would say, as she smoothed down her apron, "what a nice man you would be if you weren't so deaf! It's a pity--a great pity!" And then she would sigh, in profound ignorance that "poor Edwards's" confusion was caused by her habit of thinking aloud. And this was the companion of Arthur Sterne's solitude; but there were pleasant smiles to welcome him, and beneath their sunny rays the deeply-cut lines that seamed his forehead grew less marked, while the light of the pleasant old sunny face was reflected in his own. Aunt Fanny had seen the change that had come over her nephew, and waited patiently for his complaints, which came not; and after many days, unable to contain her anxiety, she crossed to where the curate was sitting, and, taking his hand, frowned severely as she felt his pulse. "Well, aunty, and how is it?" he said, smiling at the earnest countenance beside his. But Aunt Fanny was too much occupied with her thoughts to speak, and only nodded, and then shook her head, as, in her own mind, she went over her long catalogue of simples suited to the various ills of human life, till at last she settled upon camomile-tea as being the most efficacious remedy for her nephew's complaint, which she settled to be disorder of the liver, produced from over-work, and not a word would she hear to the contrary. "Now, don't shout, my dear; I'm not deaf. You know you do too much; and if you won't petition the bishop for a change, I shall. What do you say to a pleasant curacy in some pretty country place?" Nothing. What could he say, when he had wakened to the fact that, in spite of pride and doubts, that court was all the world to him?