In an arm-chair a little to the left of the table, sat a stately old lady of perhaps sixty-five years of age, looking not unlike the dignified housekeeper of Hyde Hall. She was arrayed in a stiff black gown, with a surplice bosom, open to reveal a glimpse of the snow-white muslin handkerchief crossed over the bosom within; a white muslin cap, with a very high and stiffly-starched crown, surmounted her silvery gray hair and severe physiognomy, and added height if not dignity to her appearance. On the other side, between her chair, and the corner of the fire-place, was a stand on which stood a lamp and a volume of what might have been religious tracts, just closed and laid aside, with her spectacles between the leaves to keep the place. Had Estelle been in a condition to notice any thing, she might have been repelled by the severe aspect of this lady, who the reader has already guessed to be Mrs. Oldfield, the Rector’s wife. Mrs. Oldfield belonged to the old school of English women of the middle classes. A rigid pietist, a severe disciplinarian, a model wife, mother and housekeeper; she had reared, in high respectability, a large family, had seen her sons established in professions, had married off her daughters to eligible and responsible men—in a word, had completed her life’s work without a flaw or blemish, and now at the age of sixty-five had sat down in perfect self-satisfaction and very little charity for those who had been less fortunate. As she saw the party enter, she arose, somewhat stiffly, between formality, age and rheumatism, and stood ready to receive her guests; but soon stared almost as wildly as had Sarah Copley on perceiving the vailed bridal figure that hung upon her husband’s arm; her first idea was, that their old bachelor friend, Mr. Trevor, had resolved upon taking to himself a wife, and brought the lady there to be married; she frowned formidably in advance at this suppositions irregularity. Mr. Oldfield sighed deeply as he noticed the rigor of her first regards of one to whom he had dared to promise on her part a mother’s tender care; he silently prayed that when she should know all, the weight of her righteous indignation might fall only on the guilty, not on the innocent unfortunate. But her austere aspect, while as yet she knew nothing to the disadvantage of the guest, (but that she seemed to be placed in an embarrassing position,) filled him with forebodings as to her future treatment of his charge; while he thanked heaven for the mental abstraction from outward objects that so shielded the already wounded heart of poor Estelle from the arrows of unkindness in her eyes. All these thoughts on either side passed in much less time than it has taken to tell. “This is Lady Montressor, Mrs. Oldfield,” said the Rector, presenting his protege.