The Vicar of Woodside was, in fact, as some people mischievously called her, the Reverend Petronella Parsons. Whether she wrote her brother’s sermons was a disputed question. She certainly did other things in his name which she had better have let alone. He was three or four years her junior, and had always so entirely followed her lead, that he seemed to have no personal identity; but to be only her male complement. That Armine should have set up a lady of this calibre for the first goddess of his fancy was one of the comical chances of life, but she was a fine, handsome, fresh-looking woman of five-and-thirty, with a strong vein of sentiment--ecclesiastical and poetic--just ignorant enough to gush freely, and too genuine to be _always_ offensive. She had been infinitely struck with Armine, had hung a perfect romance of renovation on him, sympathised with his every word, and lavished on him what perhaps was not quite flattery, because she was entirely in earnest, but which was therefore all the worse for him. Barbara had a natural repulsion from her, and could not understand Armine’s being attracted, and for the first time in their lives this was creating a little difference between the brother and sister. Babie had said, in rather an uncalled-for way, that Miss Parsons would draw back when she knew the truth, and Armine had been deeply offended at such an ungenerous hint, and had reduced her to a tearful declaration that she was very sorry she had said anything so uncalled for. Petronella herself had been much vexed at Armine’s three days’ defection, which was ascribed to the worldly and anti-ecclesiastical influences of the rest of the family. She wanted her brother to preach a sermon about Lot’s wife; but Jemmie, as she called him, had on certain occasions a passive force of his own, and she could not prevail. She regretted it the less when Armine and Babie duly did the work they had undertaken in the Sunday-school, though they would not come in for any intermediate meals. “What did Mrs. Brownlow tell you in her note?” she asked of her brother while giving him his tea before the last service. “That in a few days she shall be able to answer me.” “Ah, well! Do you know there is a belief in the parish that something has happened--that a claim is to be set up to the whole property, and that the whole family will be reduced to beggary?” “I never heard of an estate to which there was not some claimant in obscurity.” “But this comes from undoubted authority.” Mr. Parsons smiled a little. “One can’t help it if servants _will_ hear things. Well! any way it will be overruled for good to that dear boy--though it would be a cruel stroke on the parish.”