Mrs. Dodd was a woman who, as we know, did her duty according to her lights. She was determined at all hazards to do her duty now, without flinching, to her sister-in-law, for she had already burnt her ships, and she entered the drawing-room with the deliberate intention of bringing the old squire to the point. The unsuspecting squire asked for the vicar, after shaking hands with the vicar's wife, and on being informed that his old friend was from home he innocently hoped that the vicar's sister was quite well. "Ah," said Mrs. Dodd with a sigh, "we're a little concerned about Stacey." "You should let Pestle see her," replied the sympathizing squire. Now Dr. Pestle was the parish doctor, and he deservedly enjoyed the confidence of every soul in King's Warren. "I fear, squire, hers is not a bodily affection," said Mrs. Dodd with a deep sigh. "Good Gad! you don't mean to say her mind's giving way?" anxiously demanded the prosaic squire. "Oh no, we fancy it's an affection of the heart." "Impossible! at her age. Why she's fifty," emphatically asserted the old gentleman. "Not fifty, Mr. Warrender; Stacey Dodd is but forty-one." "You don't say so. I should never have thought it." The opening of the engagement had egregiously failed. At present the campaign seemed most unpromising. When a gentleman of mature years looks upon a lady as fifty, he can hardly be suspected of designs upon her virgin heart, or of a wish to destroy her peace of mind. Beaten in her attack on the outposts, Mrs. Dodd changed her strategy with that multiplicity of resource that always distinguishes the greatest generals--she determined at once to carry the war into the enemy's country. "You must miss the girls very much, squire," she said as she took up a little painted hand-screen, to protect her complexion, on which she lavished much anxious care, from the fierce blaze of the fire. "Yes," she continued, "you must feel it very dull at The Warren now. Quite lonely, I fear." "No," answered the squire cheerfully, "I have Miss Hood, you know, and we play bezique or backgammon of an evening." "Ah," replied Mrs. Dodd severely, and horrible visions of those dangerous evenings flashed through the mind of the indignant woman. In her mind's eye she fancied the squire sitting at the backgammon board gazing at Miss Hood's shapely arm and hand, for though Miss Hood was the same age as her sister-in-law, she still had a very shapely arm and hand. "Yes," said the squire, "and she reads me the girls' letters; they are a great consolation, for Georgie seems so thoroughly happy." What more dangerous occupation for a hale old gentleman than to sit and listen by the hour to the written raptures of his daughter on the subject of married bliss, read to him by a lady of prepossessing appearance, by his own fireside, and after having partaken of at least three glasses of old port? "I suppose," said the vicar's wife with assumed carelessness, "that Miss Hood will be leaving you soon?"