liberty to remove Lady Maud whenever you please. I dispense with the three months’ notice.” It was this speech which established Mrs. Stone’s position far more than her excellence in professional ways. A woman who dared to look a countess in the face, and make such a suggestion, was too wonderful a person to be contemplated save with respect and awe. Lady Langton herself withdrew, abashed and confounded, protesting that to take Maud a way was the last idea in her mind. And Mrs. Stone’s empire was thus established. The incident made a great impression on the county generally; and it nearly threw into a nervous fever the other mistress, conjointly with Mrs. Stone, of the White House, her sister Miss Southwood, called, as a matter of course, Southernwood by the girls, who stood by aghast, and heard her say, “I dispense with the three months’ notice:” and expected nothing less than that the sky should fall, and the walls crumble in round them. Miss Southwood liked to think afterward that it was her own deprecating glances, her look of horror and dismay, and, above all, the cup of exquisite tea which she offered Lady Langton as she waited for her carriage, which put everything straight; but all her civilities would never have established that moral ascendency which her sister’s uncompromising defiance secured. Miss Southwood was the elder of the two. She was forty-five or thereabouts, and she was old-fashioned. Whether it was by calculation, to make a claim of originality for herself, such as it was, or simply because she thought that style becoming to her, nobody knew; but she dressed in the fashions which had been current in her youth, and never changed. She wore her hair in a knot fastened by a high comb behind, and with little ringlets drooping on either cheek; and amid the long and sweeping garments of the present era, wore a full plain skirt which did not touch the ground, and _gigot_ sleeves. In this dress she went about the house softly and briskly, without the whistling and rustling of people in long trains. She was a very mild person in comparison with her high-spirited and despotic sister; but yet was gifted with a gentle obstinacy, and seldom permitted any argument to beguile her from her own way. She had, nominally, the same power in the house as Mrs. Stone, and it was partly her money which was put in peril by her sister’s audacity; but the elder had always been faithful to the younger, and though she might grumble, never failed to make common cause with her, even in her most heroic measures. As for Lucy Trevor, though she shook her head, she submitted, feeling that to suffer on behalf of an heiress was a pain from which the worst sting was taken out; for it was not to be supposed that a girl so rich could allow her school-mistress to come to harm on her account. Mrs. Stone was far more imposing in appearance. She was full five years younger, and she was not old-fashioned. She was tall,