r ma's time, and her pa's, ah! ever since she cut her teeth
almost;' and Mrs. Plummer says, says she----"

"That'll do, Puckers," observed Miss Bruce, "I shall not want you any
more. Good-night."

She took as little notice of her handmaid's volubility as if the
latter had been a grey parrot, and dismissed her with a certain cold,
imperial manner that none of the household ever dreamt it possible
to dispute or disobey; but after Puckers, with a quantity of white
draperies over her arm, had departed to return no more, she sat down
at the dressing-table, and began to think with all her might.

Her maid was a fool, no doubt: all maids were; but the shaft of folly,
shot at random, went home to the quick. "A house where she wasn't
mistress!" Had she ever considered the future shelter offered her by
Aunt Agatha in that light? Here at the Manor, for as long as she could
remember, had she not reigned supreme? All the little arrangements of
dinner-parties, picnics, archery-meetings, and such gatherings as
make up country society, had fallen into her hands. Mamma didn't
care--mamma never cared how anything was settled so long as papa was
pleased; and papa thought Maud could not possibly do wrong. So by
degrees--and this at an age when young ladies are ordinarily in the
schoolroom--Miss Bruce had grown, on all social questions, to be the
virtual head of the family. It was a position of which, till the time
came to abdicate, she had not sufficiently appreciated the value. It
seemed so natural to order carriages and horses at her own hours, to
return visits, to receive guests, to do the honours of a comfortable
country-house with an adequate establishment, and now, could she bear
to live with Aunt Agatha, on sufferance?--Aunt Agatha, whom she had
never liked, and whom she only refrained from snubbing and setting
down, because they so seldom met, but when the elder lady had been
invited by the younger as a guest! "To be dependent," thought Maud,
mentally addressing the beautiful face in the glass, "How should you
like that? _you_ with your haughty head, and your scornful eyes, and
your hard, unbending heart? I know you! Nobody knows you but me! And I
know how _bad_ you are--how capricious, and how cruel! When you want
anything, do you ever spare anybody to get it? Did you ever love any
one on earth as well as your own way? Even mamma? O, mamma, dear, dear
mamma, if you had lived I might have got better--I _was_ better, I
know I was