Mrs. Champernowne was not a "gushing" person. She gave utterance to no rapturous praises of the sketch; but every word she said went to prove how deeply she was interested in the painter's workmanship. An inner door was opened while she was still bending over the canvas, and a bright-looking, blooming young lady appeared, and greeted the painter with frank cordiality. Some women might have feared the rivalry of such a blooming niece as Miss Helen Vicary, but Mrs. Champernowne had no mere terror of her niece's fresh young beauty than Mary Queen of Scots felt when she contemplated the charms of her four fair namesakes. She liked to have a pretty niece about her, just as she liked the sleek beauty of her Angora cats, the delicate tints of her grey-silk draperies, the turquoise blue of her Sèvres china. "Tell them to send us some tea, Helen," she said; "I am going to give Mr. Crawford an old woman's entertainment;--and you know this is not the fashionable tea before dinner," she added, turning to the painter. "The rest of the world may eat supper at eight and call it dinner, if they like; but Helen and I dine at four, and doze by the fire till six, and then we drink tea for the rest of the evening. I know that a modern Brummel would be unutterably shocked if he heard our degraded mode of life; but my tea keeps me awake, and I am always ready to enjoy the society of my friends. I have no doubt that modern hours are very wisely chosen; for of course every thing we do in the present is incontestably right, and every thing that was done in the past was supremely wrong; but I don't think the Hôtel de Rambouillet would have been quite so celebrated as it was, if people in those days had dined at half-past eight." The Belinda tea-service was brought: a clumsy guest had once contrived to break one of the Belinda saucers, but not by the faintest contraction of Mrs. Champernowne's brow could the delinquent have divined the value of the fragile soft paste which he had shattered. The widow was never more charming than when presiding over her tiny tea-table. There was no hissing urn, no glittering kettle simmering noisily above a spirit-lamp; for urns and kettles are by nature fussy, and fuss and bustle were unspeakably obnoxious to Mrs. Champernowne. The gentlemanly man-servant brought a fresh teapot every ten minutes when his mistress had many visitors, and Helen, seated by her aunt, dispensed the cups to the tea-drinkers. Every one of the teapots was a gem in its way, and had an individuality of its own. Mrs. Champernowne had a mania for teapots, and had christened her favourites by the names of illustrious tea-drinkers. There were Pope and Addison, Elizabeth Steele and Lady Mary Montague, Molly Lepel and Horace Walpole. No muscle of the gentlemanly servant's countenance relaxed when he was told that there was to be gunpowder in Lady Mary, and orange-pekoe in Mr. Pope.