Miss Anastasia stood aside, watching grimly this unexpected demonstration of friendship, and keenly criticising Agnes, who coloured high with youthful dignity and resentment, and Marian, who drew back abashed, with a painful blush, and a grieved and anxious consciousness that Louis, unseen but seeing, was a spectator of this salutation, and somehow would be quite as like to resent Mrs Edgerley’s careless compliment to herself, “as if I had been his sister.” With a steady observation the old lady kept her eyes upon her young acquaintances till the horsemen and horsewomen of Mrs Edgerley’s train had passed. Then she drew herself up to the utmost pitch of her extreme height, and, without raising her eyes, made a profound curtsy to the last of the train--he on his part lifted his hat, and bent to his saddle-bow. This was how Lord Winterbourne and his brother’s daughter recognised each other. Perhaps the wandering eyes in his bloodless face glanced a moment, shifting and uncertain as they were, upon the remarkable figure of Miss Rivers, but they certainly paused to take in, with one fixed yet comprehensive glance, the mother and the daughters, the children playing in the garden--the open door of the house--even it was possible he saw Louis, though Louis had been behind, at the end of the little green, out of sight, trying to train a wild honeysuckle round an extempore bower. Lord Winterbourne scarcely paused, and did not offer the slightest apology for his stare, but they felt, all of them, that he had marked the house, and laid them under the visionary curse of his evil eye. When he had passed, Miss Rivers put them in before her, with an imperative gesture. “Let me know what’s brewing,” said the Honourable Anastasia, as she reposed herself on the little new sofa in the old parlour. “There’s mischief in his eye.” CHAPTER XXV. THE BREWING OF THE STORM. The visit of Miss Rivers was the most complimentary attention which she could show to her new friends, for her visits were few, and paid only to a very limited number of people, and these all of her own rank and class. She was extremely curious as to their acquaintance with Mrs Edgerley, and demanded to know every circumstance from its beginning until now; and this peremptory old lady was roused to quite an eager and animated interest in the poor little book of which, Agnes could not forget, Mrs Edgerley did not remember so much as the name. The Honourable Anastasia declared abruptly that she never read novels, yet demanded to have _Hope Hazlewood_ placed without an instant’s delay in her pony-carriage. “Do it at once, my dear: a thing which is done at the moment cannot be forgotten,” said Miss Rivers. “You write books, eh? Well, I asked you if you were clever; why did you not tell me at once?”