She had had an unhappy and misunderstood--I mean too accurately understood--existence, during the early years when her elder sister Maria ruthlessly exhorted her to exert herself, and continually frustrated her mild inveterate determination to have everything done for her. But a temporary ailment long since cured and a sympathetic doctor had enabled her to circumvent Maria, and to establish herself for good on her sofa, with the soft-hearted Catherine in attendance. Her unlined face showed that she had found her niche in this uneasy world, and was no longer as in all her earlier years a drifter through life, terrified by the possibility of fatiguing herself. Greatly to her credit, and possibly owing to Catherine's mediation, Aunt Maria accepted the situation, and never sought to undermine the castle, not in Spain but on a sofa, which her sister had erected, and in which she had found the somewhat colourless happiness of her life. "Come in, my love, come in," said Aunt Harriet, with playful gaiety. "Come in and sit by me." Her love came in and sat down obediently on the low stool by her aunt's couch, that stool to which she was so frequently beckoned, on which it was her lot to hear so much advice on the subject of the housekeeping and the management of the servants. "I think, Annette, you ought to speak to Hodgkins about the Albert biscuits. I know I left six in the tin yesterday, and there were only four to-day. I went directly I was down to count them. It is not good for _her_ to take the dining-room Alberts and then to deny it, as she did the other day. So I think it will be best if I don't move in the matter, and if you mention it as if you had noticed it yourself." Or, "There was a cobweb on my glass yesterday. I think, dearest, you must not overlook that. Servants become very slack unless they are kept up to their work." Aunt Harriet was an enemy of all slackness, idleness, want of energy, shirking in all its branches. She had taken to reading Emerson of late, and often quoted his words that "the only way of escape in all the worlds of God was performance." Annette would never have kept a servant if she had listened to her aunt's endless promptings. But she did not listen to them. Her placid, rather happy-go-lucky temperament made her forget them at once. "Have you had supper, dear child?" "Not yet. I will go now." "And did you remember to take a lozenge as you left the church?" "I am afraid I forgot." "Ah! my dear, it's a good thing you have some one to look after you and mother you. It's not too late to take one now." "I should like to go and have supper now. I am very hungry." "I rejoice to hear it. It is wonderful to me how you can do without a regular meal on choir nights. If it had been me, I should have fainted. But sit down again for one moment. I have something to tell you. You will never guess whom we have had here." "I am sure I never shall." "You know how much Maria thinks of literary people?" "Yes."