lady the cost in nervous force must have been prodigious. Also, that
no fear should live with them that her eyes had seen aught not
intended for them, she would invariably enter backwards any room in
which they might be, closing the door loudly and with difficulty
before turning round: and through dark passages she would walk
singing. No woman alive could have done more; yet--such is human
nature!--neither my father nor my mother was grateful to her, so far
as I could judge.

Indeed, strange as it may appear, the more sympathetic towards them
she showed herself, the more irritated against her did they become.

"I believe, Fanny, you hate seeing Luke and me happy together," said
my mother one day, coming up from the kitchen to find my aunt
preparing for entry into the drawing-room by dropping teaspoons at
five-second intervals outside the door: "Don't make yourself so
ridiculous." My mother spoke really quite unkindly.

"Hate it!" replied my aunt. "Why should I? Why shouldn't a pair of
turtle doves bill and coo, when their united age is only a little over
seventy, the pretty dears?" The mildness of my aunt's answers often
surprised me.

As for my father, he grew positively vindictive. I remember the
occasion well. It was the first, though not the last time I knew him
lose his temper. What brought up the subject I forget, but my father
stopped suddenly; we were walking by the canal bank.

"Your aunt"--my father may not have intended it, but his tone and
manner when speaking of my aunt always conveyed to me the impression