space, towards the house, were all centuries old, bearing the stamp of distant generations upon the carved wood and endless windings; but without, everything was young and sunny-grass and daisies and lime-blossoms, bees humming, birds twittering, the roses waving up and down in the soft wind. I wish the figure of Miss Susan had belonged to this part of the landscape; but, alas! historical accuracy forbids romancing. She was the virtual mistress of the house, in absence of a better; but she was not young, nor had she been so for many a long day.

Miss Susan was about sixty, a comely woman of her age, with the fair hair and blue eyes of the Austins. Her hair was so light that it did not turn grey; and her eyes, though there were wrinkles round them, still preserved a certain innocence and candour of aspect which, ill-natured people said, had helped Miss Susan to make many a hard bargain, so guileless was their aspect. She was dressed in a grey gown of woollen stuff (alpaca, I think, for it is best to be particular); her hair was still abundant, and she had no cap on it, or any covering. In her day the adoption of a cap had meant the acceptation of old age, and Miss Susan had no intention of accepting that necessity a moment before she was obliged to do so. The sun, which had begun to turn westward, had been blazing into the drawing-room, which looked that way, and Miss Susan had been driven out of her own chair and her own corner by it-an unwarrantable piece of presumption. She had been obliged to fly before it, and she had taken refuge in the porch, which faced to the north, and where shelter was to be found. She had her knitting in her hands; but if her countenance gave any clue to her mind's occupation, something more important than knitting occupied her thoughts. She sat on the bench which stood on the deepest side between the inner and the outer entrance, knitting silently, the air breathing soft about her, the roses rustling. For a long time she did not once raise her head. The gardener was plodding about his work outside, now and then crossing the lawn with heavy leisurely

foot, muffled by the velvet of the old immemorial turf. Within there would now and then come an indistinct sound of voice or movement through the long passage; but nothing was visible, except the still grey figure in the shade of the deep porch.

By-and-by, however, this silence was broken. First came a maid, young and rosy, carrying a basket, and lighting up the old passage with a gleam of lightness and youthful colour.

"Where are you going, Jane?" said Miss Susan.

"To the almshouses, please," said Jane, passing out with a curtsey.

After her came another woman, at ten minutes' interval, older and staider, in trim bonnet and shawl, with a large carpet bag.

"Where are you going, Martha?" said the lady again. "Please, ma'am, to the almshouses," said Martha. Miss Susan shrugged her shoulders slightly, but said

no more.

A few minutes of silence passed, and then a heavy foot, slow and solemn, which seemed to come in procession from a vast distance, echoing over miles of passage, advanced gradually, with a protestation in every footfall. It was the butler, Stevens, a portly personage, with a countenance somewhat flushed with care and discontent.

"Where are you going, Stevens ?" said Miss Susan.

"I'm going where I don't want to go, mum," said Stevens, "and where I don't hold with; and, if I might make so bold as to say so, where you ought to put a stop to, if so be as you don't want to be ruinated and done for you and Miss Augustine, and all the house." !

"Ruinated' is a capital word," said Miss Susan blandly," very forcible and expressive; but, Stevens, I don't think we'll come to that yet awhile."

Going on like this is as good a way as any," grumbled the man, "encouraging an idle set of good-for-nothings to eat up ladies as takes that turn. I've seen it afore, Miss Austin. You gets imposed upon, right hand and

left hand; and as for doing good!-No, no, this ain't the way."

Stevens, too, had a basket to carry, and the afternoon was hot and the sun blazing. Between the manor and the almshouses there lay a long stretch of hot road, without any shade to speak of. He had reason, perhaps, to grumble over his unwilling share in these liberal charities. Miss Susan shrugged her shoulders again, this time with a low laugh at the butler's perturbation, and went on with her knitting. In a few minutes another step became audible, coming along the passage -a soft step with a little hesitation in it-every fifth or sixth footfall having a slight pause or shuffle which came in a kind of rhythm. Then a tall figure came round the corner, relieved against the old carved doorway at the end and the bright redness of the brick floor; a tall, very slight woman, peculiarly dressed in a long limp gown, of still lighter grey than the one Miss Susan wore, which hung closely about her, with long hanging sleeves hanging half-way down the skirt of her dress, and something like a large hood depending from her shoulders. As the day was so warm, she had not drawn this hood over her head, but wore a light black gauze scarf, covering her light hair. She was not much younger than her sister, but her hair was still lighter, having some half visible mixture of grey, which whitened its tone. Her eyes were blue, but pale, with none of the warmth in them of Miss Susan's. She carried her head a little on one side, and, in short, she was like nothing in the world so much as a mediæval saint out of a painted window, of the period when painted glass was pale in colour, and did not blaze in blues and rubies. She had a basket too, carried in both her hands, which came out of the long falling lines of her sleeves with a curious effect. Miss Augustine's basket, however, was full of flowers-roses, and some long white stalks of lilies, not quite over, though it was July, and long branches of jasmine covered with white stars.

"So you are going to the almshouses too?" said her

sister. "I think we shall soon have to go and live there ourselves, as Stevens says, if this is how you are going on."

"Ah, Susan, that would indeed be the right thing to do, if you could make up your mind to it," said her sister, in a low, soft, plaintive voice, "and let the Church have her own again. Then perhaps our sacrifice, dear, might take away the curse."

"Fiddlesticks!" said Miss Susan. "I don't believe in curses. But, Austine, my dear, everybody tells me you are doing a great deal too much."

"Can one do too much for God's poor ?"

"If we were sure of that now," said Miss Susan, shaking her head; "but some of them, I am afraid, belong to the other person. However, I won't have you crossed; but, Austine, you might show a little moderation. You have carried off Jane and Martha and Stevens: if any one comes, who is to open the door?"

"The doors are all open, and you are here," said Miss Augustine calmly. "You would not have the poor suffer for such a trifle? But I hope you will have no visitors to disturb your thoughts. I have been meditating much this morning upon that passage, 'Behold, our days are as a weaver's shuttle.' Think of it, dear. We have got much, much to do, Susan, to make up for the sins of our family."

"Fiddlesticks!" said Miss Susan again; but she said it half playfully, with tones more gentle than her decided expression of face would have prophesied. "Go away to your charities," she added. "If you do harm, you do it in a good way, and mean well, poor soul, God knows; so I hope no mischief will come of it. But send me Stevens home as soon as may be, Austine, for the sake of my possible meditations, if for nothing else; for there's nobody left in the house but old Martin and the boy and the women in the kitchen."

"What should we want with so many servants?" said Miss Augustine with a sigh; and she walked slowly out of the porch, under the rose-wreaths, and across the

lawn, the sun blazing upon her light dress, and turning it into white, and beating fiercely on her uncovered head.

"Take a parasol, for heaven's sake," said Miss Susan; but the white figure glided on, taking no notice. The elder sister paused for a moment in her knitting, and looked after the other with that look, half tender, half provoked, with which we all contemplate the vagaries of those whom we love but do not sympathize with, and whose pursuits are folly to us. Miss Susan possessed what is called "strong sense," but she was not intolerant, as people of strong sense so often are; at least she was not intolerant to her sister, who was the creature most unlike her, and whom she loved best in the world.

The manor-house did not belong to the Miss Austins, but they had lived in it all their lives. Their family history was not a bright one, as I have said; and their own immediate portion of the family had not fared better than the previous generations. They had one brother who had gone into the diplomatic service, and had married abroad and died young, before the death of their father, leaving two children, a boy and a girl, who had been partially brought up with the aunts. Their mother was a French-woman, and had married a second time. The two children, Herbert and Reine, had passed half of their time with her, half with their father's sisters; for Miss Susan had been appointed their guardian by their father, who had a high opinion of her powers. do not know that this mode of education was very good for the young people; but Herbert was one of those gentle boys predestined to a short life, who take little harm by spoiling. He was dying now at one-and-twenty, among the Swiss hills, whither he had been taken, when the weather grew hot, from one of the invalidrefuges on the Mediterranean shore. He was perishing slowly, and all false hope was over, and everybody knew it-a hard fate enough for his family; but there were other things involved which made it harder still. The estate of Whiteladies was strictly entailed. Miss Susan

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