. All is gloom.

Meantime, the coachman (who has evidently come straight from the Ark),
having turned some handle that compels the galvanized beasts to come to
a standstill, descends, with slow and fearful steps, to the ground.

He has thrown the reins to another old man who is sitting on the box
beside him, and who, though only ten years his junior, is always
referred to by him as "the boy." Letting down a miraculous amount of
steps, he gives his arm to a dilapidated old woman, who, with much
dignity, and more difficulty, essays to reach the gravel.

"Some day or other, when out driving," says Dicky Browne, meditatively,
"those three old people will go to sleep, and those animated skeletons
will carry them to the land where they would _not_ be."

Then a step is heard outside, and they all run back to their seats and
sink into them, and succeed in looking exactly as if they had never
quitted them for the past three hours, as the door opens and the man
announces Miss Gaunt.

"Remember the puddings," says Dicky Browne, in a careful aside, as Dulce
rises to receive her first guest.

She is tall--and gaunt as her name. She is old, but strong-minded. She
affects women's rights, and all that sort of thing, and makes herself
excessively troublesome at times. Women, in her opinion, are
long-suffering, down-trodden angels; all men are brutes! Meetings got up
for the purpose of making men and women detest each other are generously
encouraged by her. It is useless to explain her further, as she has
little to do with the story, and, of course, you have all met her once
(I hope not twice) in your lifetimes.

Dulce goes up to greet her with her usual gracious smile. Then she is
gently reminded that she once met Julia Beaufort before, and then she is
introduced to Portia. To the men she says little, regarding them
probably as beings beneath notice, all, that is, excepting Dicky Browne,
who insists on conversing with her, and treating her with the most
liberal cordiality, whether she likes it or not.

Dexterously he leads up the conversation, until culinary matters are
brought into question, when Miss Gaunt says in her slow, crushing
fashion:

"How do you like that last woman I sent you? Satisfactory, eh?"

"Cook, do you mean?" asks Dulce, to gain time.

"Yes--cook," says the old lady, uncompromisingly. "She
was"--severely--"in my opinion, one of the best cooks I ever met."

"Yes, of course, I dare say. We just think her