thin Miss Brabazon, who took advantage of her thinness to wedge
herself into every one's affairs, "A most interesting account. What
a nice place Abbots' House could be made with a little taste! So
aristocratic! Just what I should like if I could afford it!
The drawing-room should be done up in the Moorish style, with
geranium-coloured silk curtains, like dear Lady L----'s boudoir at
Twickenham. And Mrs. Ashleigh has taken the house on lease too, I
suppose!" Here Miss Brabazon fluttered her fan angrily, and then
exclaimed, "But what on earth brings Mrs. Ashleigh here?"

Answered Mrs. Colonel Poyntz, with the military frankness by which she
kept her company in good humour, as well as awe,--

"Why do any of us come here? Can any one tell me?"

There was a blank silence, which the hostess herself was the first to
break.

"None of us present can say why we came here. I can tell you why Mrs.
Ashleigh came. Our neighbour, Mr. Vigors, is a distant connection of
the late Gilbert Ashleigh, one of the executors to his will, and the
guardian to the heir-at-law. About ten days ago Mr. Vigors called on me,
for the first time since I felt it my duty to express my disapprobation
of the strange vagaries so unhappily conceived by our poor dear friend
Dr. Lloyd. And when he had taken his chair, just where you now sit,
Dr. Fenwick, he said in a sepulchral voice, stretching out two fingers,
so,--as if I were one of the what-do-you-call-'ems who go to sleep when
he bids them, 'Marm, you know Mrs. Ashleigh? You correspond with her?'
'Yes, Mr. Vigors; is there any crime in that? You look as if there
were.' 'No crime, marm,' said the man, quite seriously. 'Mrs.
Ashleigh is a lady of amiable temper, and you are a woman of masculine
understanding.'"

Here there was a general titter. Mrs. Colonel Poyntz hushed it with a
look of severe surprise. "What is there to laugh at? All women would be
men if they could. If my understanding is masculine, so much the better
for me. I thanked Mr. Vigors for his very handsome compliment, and he
then went on to say that though Mrs. Ashleigh would now have to leave
Kirby Hall in a very few weeks, she seemed quite unable to make up her
mind where to go; that it had occurred to him that, as Miss Ashleigh was
of an age to see a little of the world, she ought not to remain buried
in the country; while, being of quiet mind, she recoiled from the
dissipation of London. Between the seclusion of the one and the turmo