And then followed the queerest old lady Lally had ever seen. She leaned upon the arm of a tall, angular, hatchet-faced woman, her maid and constant attendant, who spoke to her mistress with a loving gentleness a mother might exhibit toward her child, but which sounded strangely from her thin, compressed lips, and who guided the faltering steps of her mistress with the tenderest care. It was the old lady, however, upon whom Lally’s gaze was fixed with strange intensity. She was thin and withered and bent, a mere wreck of a woman who had been in her day handsome, graceful and spirited. She was nearly eighty years of age, and her hands, incased in black knitted mittens, through whose open meshes her bony fingers showed, clasped a gold-headed staff, which partially supported her, the maid giving her an arm. The old lady wore an old-fashioned brocade gown, a big traveling cloak, a white frilled cap, and a huge scuttle-shaped bonnet, such as had been worn in her early prime. But her eyes were black and keen and penetrating, full of sparkle and brightness; her hooked nose was prominent like an eagle’s beak; and her mouth was curled habitually in a strangely cynical smile or sneer. The old lady gave a quizzical glance up at the doorway, in which stood Mr. and Mrs. Blight with outstretched arms, and then looked toward Lally. The young girl shrank back, and hurried in at the rear porch and up stairs with her young charge, just as Mrs. Wroat came in at the front door and was received by her connections with loud exclamations of welcome. The visitor was installed in her own apartments, and she did not emerge from them for the remainder of the day. Mr. Blight went to his office. A supernatural stillness reigned throughout the villa. Mrs. Wroat chose to appear at dinner, which was served at Sandy Lands at seven o’clock; and Mr. Blight was then at home to give her his arm into the dining-room, and to pay her all necessary attentions. She looked, as Mrs. Blight privately remarked to her husband, “like a witch of Endor,” in her dinner costume of black velvet, with a scarlet velvet circular cloak thrown about her thin bent figure, and with her keen black eyes peering sharply out of her sallow face. She only needed a scarlet hood over her gray, wild looking hair, to complete her resemblance to one of the witches who are fabled to meet in lonely wood at midnight, to stir devilish messes in boiling caldrons. But then she wore a set of very fine diamonds, and even a “witch of Endor,” with diamonds, would have been handsomely treated by Mrs. Blight. The old lady was not as courteous as a female Chesterfield. In fact she snapped out spiteful remarks with the utmost unconsciousness of the rising anger of host or hostess, taking a malicious pleasure in stirring up their evil passions, knowing that they dared not give vent to them. It may be that she comprehended their time-serving, speculating natures, and realized that they paid court to her only for her money.