ings than Miss Aylmer. She
had, indeed, abandoned a life's correspondence with an old friend
because she would not pay the postage on letters to Italy. She knew
that it was for the honour of the family that one of her brothers
should sit in Parliament, and was quite willing to deny herself a
new dress because sacrifices must be made to lessen electioneering
expenses. She knew that it was her lot to be driven about slowly in a
carriage with a livery servant before her and another behind her, and
then eat a dinner which the cook-maid would despise. She was aware
that it was her duty to be snubbed by her mother, and to encounter
her father's ill-temper, and to submit to her brother's indifference,
and to have, so to say, the slightest possible modicum of personal
individuality. She knew that she had never attracted a man's love,
and might hardly hope to make friends for the comfort of her coming
age. But still she was contented, and felt that she had consolation
for it all in the fact that she was an Aylmer. She read many novels,
and it cannot but be supposed that something of regret would steal
over her as she remembered that nothing of the romance of life had
ever, or could ever, come in her way. She wept over the loves of many
women, though she had never been happy or unhappy in her own. She
read of gaiety, though she never encountered it, and must have known
that the world elsewhere was less dull than it was at Aylmer Park.
But she took her life as it came, without a complaint, and prayed
that God would make her humble in the high position to which it had
pleased Him to call her. She hated Radicals, and thought that Essays
and Reviews, and Bishop Colenso, came direct from the Evil One. She
taught the little children in the parish, being specially urgent to
them always to curtsey when they saw any of the family;--and was as
ignorant, meek, and stupid a poor woman as you shall find anywhere in
Europe.

It may be imagined that Captain Aylmer, who knew the comforts of his
club and was accustomed to life in London, would feel the dulness
of the paternal roof to be almost unendurable. In truth, he was not
very fond of Aylmer Park, but he was more gifted with patience than
most men of his age and position, and was aware that it behoved him
to keep the Fifth Commandment if he expected to have his own days
prolonged in the land. He therefore made his visits periodically,
and contented himself with clipping a few days at both e