James retired with an injured air, and Mrs. Dormer-Smith was left to consider within herself whether duty required her to be present at the interview between May and this unknown Mrs. Simpson, or whether she might indulge herself by sitting still and reading Mrs. Griffin's last letter in comfort and quietude. After a brief deliberation, she resolved to go downstairs. There was no knowing who or what the woman might be. James had said something about Oldchester. No doubt she came from that place. Perhaps she was an emissary of Mr. Rivers! Pauline, as she rose and drew a shawl round her shoulders, before facing the chillier atmosphere of the staircase, breathed a pious hope that her brother Augustus might sooner or later compensate her for all the sacrifices she was making on behalf of May. Before she reached the dining-room, she heard the sound of a fluent monologue. May was not speaking at all, so far as Mrs. Dormer-Smith could make out. When she entered the room, she found the girl sitting beside a stout, florid woman, dressed in _trente-six couleurs_--as Pauline phrased it to herself--who was holding forth with a profusion of "nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles." Mrs. Dormer-Smith made this stranger a bow of such freezing politeness as ought to have petrified her on the spot; and, turning to May, inquired with raised eyebrows, "Who is your friend, May?" But Amelia Simpson had not the least suspicion that she was being snubbed in the most superior style known to modern science. She rose, with her usual impulsive vehemence, from her chair, and said smilingly-- "Mrs. Dormer-Smith? I thought so! Permit me to apologize for a seeming breach of etiquette. I am well aware that my call ought properly to have been paid to _you_, the mistress of this elegant mansion; but, being _personally_ unknown--although we are not so 'remote, unfriended, melancholy, or slow'--not that I use the epithet in a slang sense, I assure you!--in Oldchester, as to be unaware that Mrs. Dormer-Smith, the accomplished relative of our dear Miranda, is in all respects 'a glass of fashion and a mould of form.' Only I wish our divine bard had chosen any other word than 'mould,' which somehow is inextricably connected in my mind with short sixes." "Oh!" ejaculated Pauline, in a faint voice, as she sank into a chair; and she remained gazing at the visitor with a helpless air. At another time, May would have had a keen and enjoying sense of the comic elements in this little scene; but although she saw them now as distinctly as she ever could have done, she was too unhappy to enjoy them. She said quietly-- "This is Mrs. Simpson, Aunt Pauline. Her husband is professor of music at Oldchester; and they are both very old friends of dear Granny."