finished speaking, and walked
downstairs, leaving him to wind up his speech with "an old
she-dragon"!

By this time both the sun and the servants had arisen, the former
shining into the disorderly dining room, and disclosing to the latter
the weary, jaded Anna, who, while Madam Conway was exploring the
house, had thrown herself upon the lounge and had fallen asleep.

"Who is she, and where did she come from?" was anxiously inquired,
and they were about going in quest of Margaret when their mistress
appeared suddenly in their midst, and their noisy demonstrations of
joyful surprise awoke the sleeping girl, who, rubbing her red eyelids,
asked for her aunt, and why she did not come to meet her.

"She has been a little excited, and forgot you, perhaps," answered
Madam Conway, at the same time bidding one of the servants to show the
young lady to Mrs. Jeffrey's room.

The good lady had recovered her composure somewhat, and was just
wondering why her niece had not come with Madam Conway, as had
been arranged, when Anna appeared, and in her delight at once more
beholding a child of her only sister, and her husband's brother, she
forgot in a measure how injured she had felt. Ere long the breakfast
bell rang; but Anna declared herself too weary to go down, and as Mrs.
Jeffrey felt that she could not yet meet Madam Conway face to face,
they both remained in their room, Anna again falling away to sleep,
while her aunt, grown more calm, sought, and this time found, comfort
in her favorite volume. Very cool, indeed, was that breakfast,
partaken in almost unbroken silence below. The toast was cold, the
steak was cold, the coffee was cold, and frosty as an icicle was the
lady who sat where the merry Maggie had heretofore presided. Scarcely
a word was spoken by anyone; but in the laughing eyes of Maggie there
was a world of fun, to which the mischievous mouth of Henry Warner
responded by a curl exceedingly annoying to his stately hostess, who,
in passing him his coffee, turned her head in another direction lest
she should be too civil!

Breakfast being over, George Douglas, who began to understand Madam
Conway tolerably well, asked of her a private interview, which was
granted, when he conciliated her first by apologizing for anything
ungentlemanly he might have done in her house, and startled her next
by asking for Theo as his wife.

"You can," said he, "easily ascertain my character and standing in
Worcester, where for the la