maiden aunts, will repeat the tale till the end of time, so long as
they have youths belonging to them on whom to expend their natural
tendency to clinging fondness, and ignorant, innocent hero worship.
The Misses Leaf--ay, even Selina, whose irritation against the
provoking boy was quite mollified by the elegant young man--were no
wiser than their neighbors.

But there was one person in the household who still obstinately
refused to bow the knee to Ascott. Whether it was, as psychologists
might explain, some instinctive polarity in their natures; or
whether, having once conceived a prejudice, Elizabeth held on to it
like grim death; still there was the same unspoken antagonism between
them. The young fellow took little notice of her except to observe
"that she hadn't grown any handsomer;' but Elizabeth watched him with
a keen severity that overlooked nothing, and resisted, with a passive
pertinacity that was quite irresistible, all his encroachments on the
family habits, all the little self-pleasing ways which Ascott had
been so used to of old, that neither he nor his aunts apparently
recognized them as selfish.

"I canna bear to see him" ("can not," suggested her mistress, who not
seeing any reason why Elizabeth should not speak the Queen's English
as well as herself, had instituted h's, and stopped a few more
glaring provincialisms.) "I cannot bear to see him, Miss Hilary,
lolling on the arm-chair, when Missis looks so tired and pale, and
sitting up o' nights, burning double fires, and going up stairs at
last with his boots on, and waking every body. I dunnot like it, I
say."

"You forget; Mr. Ascott has his studies. He must work for the next