ecent things be new-fangled?"

"I want no mouldy old stuff!--There! Put the yellow silk on the lowest
shelf."

"'Tis old-fashioned, I warrant you, to say to your sister, `An' it
please you'?"

"And the murrey right above.--Oh, stuff!"

The first half of the sentence was for Clare; the second for Rachel.

"'Tis not ill stuff, Niece," said the latter coolly, as she left the
room.

"And what thinkest of Gertrude?" inquired Sir Thomas of his sister, when
she rejoined him and Lady Enville.

"Marry!" said Rachel in her dryest manner, "I think the goods be mighty
dear at the price."

"I count," returned her brother, "that when Gertrude's gowns be paid
for, there shall not be much left over for Jack's debts."

"Dear heart! you should have thought so, had you been above but now. To
see her Grace (for she carrieth her like a queen) a-counting of her
gowns, and a-cursing of her poor maid Audrey that two were left behind,
when seventeen be yet in her coffers!"

"Seventeen!" repeated the Squire, in whose eyes that number was enough
to stock any reasonable woman for at least half her life.

"Go to--seventeen!" echoed Rachel.

"Well-a-day! What can the lass do with them all?" wondered Sir Thomas.

"Dear hearts! Ye would not see an earl's daughter low and mean?"
interposed Lady Enville.

"If this Gertrude be not so, Orige,--at the least in her heart,--then is
Jennet a false speaker, and mine ears have bewrayed me, belike.
Methinks a woman of good breeding might leave swearing and foul talk to
the men, and be none the worse for the same: nor see I good cause
wherefore she should order her sisters like so many Barbary slaves."

"Ay so!--that marketh her high degree," said Lady Enville.

"I wis not, Orige, how Gertrude gat her degree, nor her father afore
her," answered Rachel: "but this I will tell thee--that if one of the
`beggarly craftsmen' that Jack loveth to snort at, should allow him,
before me, in such talk as I have heard of her, I would call on Sim to
put him forth with no more ado. Take my word for it, she cometh of no
old nor honourable stock, but is of low degree in very truth, if the
truth were known."

Rachel's instinct was right. Lady Gertrude's father was a _parvenu_, of
very mean extraction. Her great-uncle had made the family fortune,
partly in trade, but mostly by petty peculations; and her father, who
had attracted the Queen's eye when a young lawyer, had been rapidly
promoted through the