"Maria, if you had any sense--but I think you have less and less every
day--you would remember that they are not coming by rail at all--of
course not. On the very first day of term, when Dr. Grey would meet
so many people he knew to have to introduce his wife! Why,
everybody would have laughed at him; and no wonder. Verily, there's
no fool like an old fool."

"Henrietta!" pitifully appealed the sister, "you know dear Arnold is not
a fool. He never did a foolish thing in his life, except, perhaps, in
making this unfortunate marriage. And she may improve. Any body
ought to improve who had the advantage of living constantly with dear
Arnold."

Miss Gascoigne, always on the watch for affronts, turning sharply
round, but there was not a shadow of satire in her friend's simplicity.
"My dear Maria, you are the greatest--"

But what Miss Grey was remained among the few bitter speeches that
Miss Gascoigne left unsaid, for at that moment the heavy oak door was
thrown wide open, and Barker, the butler (time-honored institution of
Saint Bede's, who thought himself one of its strongest pillars of
support), repeated, in his sonorous voice,

"The master and Mrs. Grey."

Thus announced--suddenly and formally, like a stranger, in her own
house--Christian came home.

The two maiden aunts rose ceremoniously. Either their politeness
sprang from their natural habit of good-breeding, or it was wrung from