rrid, grim old gentleman, Mr. Dangerfield. No, she had money
enough of her own to walk through life in maiden meditation, fancy free,
without being beholden to anybody for a sixpence. Why, Aunt Rebecca
herself had never married, and was she not all the happier of her
freedom? Aunt Rebecca tried before the general went away, to inflame and
stir him up upon the subject. But he had no capacity for coercion. She
almost regretted she had made him so very docile. He would leave the
matter altogether to his daughter. So Aunt Rebecca, as usual, took, as
we have said, the carriage of the proceedings.

Since the grand eclaircissement had taken place between Mervyn and
Gertrude Chattesworth, they met with as slight and formal a recognition
as was possible, consistently with courtesy. Puddock had now little to
trouble him upon a topic which had once cost him some uneasiness, and
Mervyn acquiesced serenely in the existing state of things, and seemed
disposed to be 'sweet upon' pretty Lilias Walsingham, if that young lady
had allowed it; but her father had dropped hints about his history and
belongings which surrounded him in her eyes with a sort of chill and
dismal halo. There was something funeste and mysterious even in his
beauty; and her spirits faltered and sank in his presence. Something of
the same unpleasant influence, too, or was it fancy, she thought his
approach seemed now to exercise upon Gertrude also, and that she, too,
was unaccountably chilled and darkened by his handsome, but ill-omened
presence.

Aunt Becky was not a woman to be soon tired, or even daunted. The young
lady's resistance put her upon her mettle, and she was all the more
determined, that she suspected her niece had some secret motive for
rejecting a partner in some respects so desirable.

Sometimes, it is true, Gertrude's resistance flagged; but this was only
the temporary acquiescence of fatigue, and the battle was renewed with
the old spirit on the next occasion, and was all to be fought over
again. At breakfast there was generally, as I may say, an affair of
picquets, and through the day a dropping fire, sometimes rising to a
skirmish; but the social meal of supper was generally the period when,
for the most part, these desultory hostilities blazed up into a general
action. The fortune of war as usual shifted. Sometimes Gertrude left the
parlour and effected a retreat to her bed-room. Sometimes it was Aunt
Rebecca's turn to slam the door, and leave