lips set, a spot of red showed on either cheek.

“Right!” she said briefly, and at that moment the train steamed into the station and the conference was at an end.

Chapter Seven.

Aunt Maria’s Choice.

Aunt Maria arrived on Tuesday night, bringing “my woman” in attendance. She was more like a parrot than ever, for her face had grown narrower, her nose bigger, and the roundness of her eyes was accentuated by gold-rimmed spectacles. When a richly coloured Paisley shawl was drawn tightly over her sloping shoulders the resemblance was positively startling to behold, and the terrors of an eight-weeks visit loomed larger than ever before the minds of the Garnett sisters.

The extraordinary thing was that Aunt Maria seemed to take no notice of the girls, whom, as everybody was aware, she had come to inspect. She talked to father, she talked to mother, she cross-questioned the boys as to their progress at school and expressed regret that they had not done better; she displayed an intelligent interest in the neighbours, the servants, and the new dining-room rug, but for the three daughters of the house she had not a word, hardly, it was believed, a glance.

In the presence of such utter indifference it was impossible to keep up the various rôles which each girl had privately practised with the view of concealing her charms and diverting Aunt Maria’s attention from herself. Clemence had decided that rounded shoulders and a lurching gait were defects which at seventeen threatened a painful permanence, and had therefore lurched persistently throughout the first evening, since which time she had slowly but steadily recovered her natural gait.

After long practice before the mirror Darsie had decided that an open mouth and falling under-jaw could work marvels in the way of stupidity of expression, and had nerved herself to sit agape for the period of forty-eight hours. Lavender had decided to sulk. “Every one hates sulks! It would be better to live alone on a desert island than with a person who sulks. I’ll sulk, and she won’t be paid to have me!” So one sister had sulked and the other gaped the whole of that first long evening, and then, becoming increasingly freed from their fears, began to smile secretly across the table, to nod and to nudge, to telegraph messages in the silent but eloquent fashions to which members of a large family resort when visitors are present and talking is not allowed. And Aunt Maria munched her food, and 

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