She insisted, for instance, on paying for her board and lodging, and on a tariff of her own fixing, whenever she came to stay with them, and flatly declined to come on any other condition. They were independent-minded, and declined to be dictated to in such a matter by a small thing whom they had known in frocks with skirts only thirteen inches long. She promptly scandalised them by going to the Tontine and putting up there. Then they gave way, and she had them. After that she was capable of anything, and they submitted to all her whims, which were always pretty and thoughtful ones, and--she assured them, just as they had been wont to assure her in the days of the thirteen-inch frocks--entirely for their own good and happiness. She salved the cicatrice of the Tontine wound by carrying them all off _en masse_ to the Riviera for a month; and Aunt Jean, after whom she was named, gravely suggested the advisability of frequently opposing her ideas, since the outcome was so eminently agreeable. Then she was always making them presents, at which their independency kicked, but in which, nevertheless, they could not but own to enjoyment. But the girl was right, after all. She had much too much, and they had only enough, and that only with clever handling; and they would no more have accepted bald gifts of money than they would have burned down their house and claimed double the value of the furniture. Jean and her visits, and their visits to her, and with her to hitherto unattainable places, were the high lights of their lives. They loved her dearly, rejoiced in her greatly, were proud of her, and wondered much when it would all come to an end in the centering of her thoughts and affections on one sole and--they fervently hoped, but were not without misgivings, because of her wealth and her impulsiveness--worthy man. They made ingenuous little attempts at sounding her on that subject, but she was much too clever for them, and skilfully eluded all approaches which might tend, even remotely, to any self-revelations. That there were no revelations to make only added piquancy to the game, from her point of view, since it kept the aunts in a state of perpetual mystification, and held no pitfalls. Among many other changes she had seen in the last ten years, old Mr. MacTavish had retired long ago, and a younger man occupied his pulpit, and, strange to say, gave satisfaction in it.