"Liked Rome did she!--humph! nothing but pictures and priests no doubt. Cooking wasn't good. Of course not, all oil and garlic. Mr. Trubbles ill! pity that fool doesn't die--not much loss about him I should think. Wait a bit, Minnie, till I count the heel of this stocking. One, two, three, four--go on, I can listen--ten, eleven, twelve. My nephew gone to Cyprus--twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two--he's always going to some out-of-the-way place--forty-five, forty-six. He'll end up by being eaten by cannibals--fifty-three! Humph! I hope his new book will be more respectable than the last one. Eh! The Master of Otterburn. Who is he? Never heard of him. Coming back by Naples!--how can they come back by Naples. Oh! the steamer, yes! I hope Victoria won't flirt with all the young men on board. Perhaps she'll be sea-sick. That'll take all the nonsense out of her. Is that all?--dear me, these girls can't write a letter now-a-days. Here, give it to me back. You read so quietly, I can't hear half you say." This terrible old woman seized the letter and put it away, frowning on Minnie meanwhile, that damsel having meekly resumed her antimacassar. "Four o'clock," said Miss Corbin, as the clock struck the hour, "they should be here by now, but none of you young people are punctual now-a-days." "Perhaps they've been detained," expostulated Minnie timidly. "Nonsense," snapped Miss Jelly wrathfully. "Why should they be detained? They've been two days in town already. Gadding about I daresay. I don't think much of his wife, but whatever she is he's worse. I don't know however I came to have such a nephew. He hasn't got his mother's brains. That comes of having an idiot for a father." At this moment Aunt Jelly's courteous conversation was interrupted by a ring at the door, and Miss Pelch being sent to the window to reconnoitre returned with the information that it was Sir Guy and Lady Errington. Miss Corbin drew her shawl carefully round her angular shoulder, laid her knitting on her lap, and having dismissed Minnie to a distant corner of the room, where she sat in the shadow like an unhappy ghost, was prepared to receive company. Bickles, the fat, pompous butler of the establishment, threw open the door of the room and announced in a deep voice: "Sir Guy and Lady Errington." And the young couple entered into the presence of the old dragon. CHAPTER XII. AUNT JELLY'S OPINION. "All speech is silver, silence gold (I wish it were on some occasions), For though unpleasant to be told, You get the truth from your relations." Anyone hostile towards matrimony, seeing Sir Guy in the character of a newly-returned bridegroom, would certainly have said that marriage was not a failure in his case, for he looked wonderfully bright and happy as he presented his wife to Aunt Jelly.