Towards the end of the eleventh year a new incident arose to change perhaps the tenor of this strange drama. Martha Darling, a daughter of the sister Margaret who went to India, was sent home to Mr Ross to be educated in Scotland, where she was to remain till the homecoming of her parents, who had become rich on the spoils of Cheyte Sing, or the Begums of Oude, or some other unfortunate Indian victim. The girl was generous, and full of young life; and Mr Ross became hopeful that by introducing her to her aunts some instinctive feelings might be called up in the breasts of the sisters which would break up the old congelation. He told her the story of the chalk line, and got a scream of a laugh for an answer, with the threat that she would force her aunts to embrace, and weep, and be friends. Next day the visit was made, and, designedly, without any intimation that the niece had arrived in Scotland. On opening the door, Mr Ross found the two ladies in that position in which he had so often before found them, each sitting stiffly on her own side of the chalk line, and looking out of her window into the close--for, as I should have stated before, the room was supplied by two windows. “Your niece from India--only arrived yesterday.” No more time for prologue, for the girl flew forward, and taking her elder aunt round the neck, hugged her very lovingly after the Anglo-Indian fashion, and thereafter, making a spring over the line of chalk, she ran to Aunt Mary, and performed the same operation upon her, but with no emolliating result; the old petrefactions, which had become harder by the passage of every wave of time, were not to be dissolved or softened by the sparkling rill from the green sunny mountains. They looked strangely only because they looked unnaturally; but that was no reason why Martha the younger should change her nature, and so she rattled away, every now and then casting her eye, with a laugh, at the line of chalk. “If I had you only in India,” she went on, “where the natives, when they drink bang, dance such strange dances, you would laugh so. Shall I show you?” And without waiting for an answer, she began to make very pretty but somewhat irregular revolving movements on the floor, whereby in a short time, by the rapid motion of her small feet, she contrived to efface the line of chalk. “Now you can hardly see it,” she proceeded with shortened breath; “and now, the nasty thing being gone, you are to cross and shake hands, and kiss each other.”