Stung to the Quick, etc

Front matter

Mrs. BANKS'S NOVELS. STUNG TO THE QUICK. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Uniform. Edition. Crown Svo. Nota. Price 2/6. A Manchester Man. Caleb Booth's Clerk. Wooers and Winners. More than Coronets. Through the Night. Watchmaker's Daughter. Forbidden to Wed. Sybillia. In His Own Hand Glory. LONDON: GRIFFITH FARRAN & CO. and all Booksellers. FRANK RAHBURN'S INTERROGATION. 'c STUNG TO THE QUICK A NORTH COUNTRY STORY EY Mrs. G. LINNÆUS BANKS Author of "God's Providence House," "The Manchester Man," &-' THE GREY TOWER. LONDON GRIFFITH FARRAN & CO. NEWBERY* HOUSE, 39 CHARING CROSS ROAD. (The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.) CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE. I. — THE WEAR I II. — THE WAIF 5 III. — POISON II IV. — HOW THE POISON WORKED 1 8 V. — THE RESULT OF A CONFERENCE 2 1 VI. — CHANGES FOR LIFE AND DEATH 28 VII. — THE LASS THAT LOVES A SAILOR 36 VIII. — THE SPIDER AND THE FLY 43 IX. — OLD FRIENDS AND NEW FRIENDS 55 X. — A GROUP OF PORTRAITS 63 XI. — CAN THIS BE LOVE ? 68 XII. — PREPARING FOR A PLEASANT PIC-NIC 77 XIII. — FOR A MERE SONG 85 XsV. — ECHOES OF THE SONG 97 XV. — AN UNEXPECTED MORNING CALL 107 XVI. — DESERTS AND DESERTERS Il8 XVII. — A BATTLE FOR DOMINION 1 25 XVIII. — THE VALUE OF AN ALLY 134 XIX. — HOW MISS DOROTHY MANAGED 141 XX. — REPOSE 148 XXI. — BELOW THE SURFACE 1 54 XXII. — BEHIND THE CURTAINS 1 68 XXIII. — THE CAPTAIN OF THE "POLLY" 177 XXIV. — DRIFTING FROM THE SHORE 1 CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE. XXV. — THE GREY TOWER r94 XXVI. — A BRIDAL 2OI XXVII. — EVA'S NEW HOME 2°7 XXVIII. — THE SHED IN THE DINGLE 223 XXIX. — DR. GROVE'S TREATMENT OF TEMPORARY INSANITY. . 235 XXX. — LUCY'S NEW LOVER 245 • XXXI. — WOMAN'S WORK 257 XXXII. — FUEL FOR THE FIRE 26 I XXXIII. — CUTHBERT'S SHEET ANCHOR 270 XXXIV. — MISSING! 278 XXXV. — THE MAPLE DESK 287 XXXVI. — PROBLEMATIC 295 XXXVII. — THE LOST WIFE 3°2 XXXVIII. — FRIENDS DRAWN CLOSER 3IO XXXIX. — WHAT LURKED IN RHODA'S HEART 318 XL. —DR. GROVE DECLARES HIS DOUBTS 323 XLI. — LIVING OR DEAD? 332 XLII. — FOILED 343 XLIII. — THE PURSUIT 352 XLIV. — DR. GROVE AND THE GOSSIPS 357 XLV. — A CRISIS FOR LUCY 364 XLVI. — RETALIATION 373 XLVII. — A FRESH SURPRISE 382 XLVIII. — A BEGGAR, OR WORSE 392 XLIX. — EARS FROM A FULL SHEAF 40 1 L. — THE FALL OF THE CURTAIN

Chapter I. The Wear

Silence and snow — inseparable friends — had laid a dainty coverlet over the old cathedral city, and hushed its beating heart to repose. Snow on all things, gemming the boughs that shimmered in the moonshine ; blocking the country roads and stifling the sound of traffic in the streets ; fostering in the fields the seeds beneath its fleecy mantle ; clinging to window frames like quaint old alabaster carvings ; and pressing to its own destruction on the roofs near to the warm chimney-stacks. Snow on all things — on castle and cathedral, market and moor, tree and turret ; on all things save the river, and that it was not on but in ; for the stream which girds the city with translucent zone was swollen with the melting snow from many hills, and rushed onwards with a sound which made the silence more complete and solemn.

Silence was in the air and on the ground ; the silence of nature, its universal homage to the white-robed spirit — Snow. It was the Christmas Eve which closed the century's second decade, and, through the length and breadth of the land, preparations to celebrate the morrow duly were making a merry noise in thousands of homes. So, in the north, B where hearts are warm as the fires which glow upon their hearths, be sure there was no stint of the good things pertaining to Christmas hospitality. The pitmen's wives, by their huge caverns of fire, with gowns tucked up, were as busy and bustling as the cooks and mistresses of pretentious mansions, and olfactory organs might scent afar off as savoury banquets in pit villages as in the most aristocratic streets of the city; not so artistic, perhaps, but more substantial and quite as satisfactory.

Holly and mistletoe had passed from hedge to hand, and hung overhead, or decked the walls and windows alike of rich and poor ; preparations were completed, and friends assembled, or passed from home to home to " see Christmas in" and punch-bowls out, until it became a not uncommon thing thence to emerge unable to see clearly either Christmas or the way home. Shaped something like a horse-shoe, the river Wear, spanned by four bridges, girdles the city of Durham within so complete a curve, that a traveller from Chester-le-Street southward, traversing the city in as direct a line as practicable from the New North Road to Elvet, after crossing two bridges in his route, would be on the same side of the stream as before he entered a street or crossed a bridge. The rugged banks within the bend are steep and thickly wooded, the rock is crowned with ancient castle and cathedral, whilst the woods below, especially on the outer bank, are intersected with pleasant paths, charming little nooks for love-making, and dotted here and there with seats where strollers or idlers may repose in summer under umbrageous trees, and watch the bright river gliding past.

Like Dovedale, it is a marvellous treasury for the artist. At every opening fresh views are visible, fresh combinations of natural and (here) architectural beauty, for the masons of monk and warrior have added a human interest to the grandeur and glory already given by God. Alike varied, romantic, and picturesque, the two places gratify the senses THE WEAR. 3 equally, but the mind is differently impressed. The hand of Deity isal one on one, the chisel of man has marked the other. Follow me, you who would trace my story, along the outer bank of the Wear, from the north, to meet the advancing sun. Enter from Framwellgate (the northern highway) the steep defile called South Street, where gloomy, unshapely houses, tottering with age, frown on the passer as only church property dares to frown. Take breath on the summit as you emerge from the shadow into the sunshine, beaming full on the now one-sided respectable street, and, leaning over the low parapet -wall above the banks, or descending to the river-side through the first opening, view with attention the magnificent prospect spread out before the inhabitants.

Framwellgate Bridge, old and hoary, comes barely within range; but high up, across the stream, see castle and cathedral on the same foliage-clad stupendous base of rock, with the shining river for a mirror at the foot; and now, before we reach the Prebend's beautiful bridge, the stream is broken into a refreshing fall by the old weir, a mill at our feet, and opposite the veriest pigmy of a museum alone on a peninsula, looking itself more like a mill than a museum, with the water almost laving its walls, as though charitably disposed to wash away some of the dust deposited within. And now, having passed under the dry arch of the Prebend's balustraded bridge, we see the gothic water-gate by which it is reached from the clerical and collegiate quarter. Beyond this, white glimpses of the " Count's Cottage"* may be seen, like an ancient temple, amidst embowering wood and leaves, the river still shimmering azure, or golden, or green, as it reflects sky, or sun, or the trees which tower above, or overhang and dip their tresses like wanton nymphs.

Castle and cathedral have lapsed into distance, for we have reached the full sweep of the curve, have both wooded steeps in view, and you are standing with me south of Durham, resting on the * See Appendix. rustic rail of the plank bridge in our path. Listen to the murmurs of the miniature cascade beneath, where two stream lets, hot and cold, issue from a coal-pit hard by, and leap or trickle over mossy boulders, steaming or sparkling as they rush under fringing ferns, and blend their musical waters ere they mingle with the Wear to lose their own temperature, yet not to warm the river one whit. Turn your head to the right, before the river sweeps beyond ken, and a little gate comes into the picture at the end of the shady path. It leads us to the quaint old church of St. Oswald, through a graveyard filled with slabs and memorials, in all shapes and positions.

A walk between these crumbling stones, flung by Time's children into the maw of Eternity, and through the wide open iron gates, and we are east of the city, with the pavement of Church Street beneath our feet, bricks and mortar on either hand ; out of sight of the cool river and the dancing leaves, yet have our feet trod no bridge, save the plank which spans the runnels from the pit. This peculiar formation of the Wear may furnish a reason for the nomenclature of South Street, since it follows it. Although built above the west bank of the river, travellers going southward may wend that way without entering Dur ham's main streets or crossing the water at all. That is a street to try a horse or a nervous driver; the only marvel being that a vehicle is dragged up its steep ascent by any animal less ponderous and surefooted than an elephant !

Yet horses " to the manner bom" are driven upwards ordinarily, whether harnessed to cart or carriage, for the one hill saves two very little preferable in Silver Street and New Elvet ; the latter by another anomaly being an ancient looking, narrow thoroughfare, with dingy brick houses of many shapes and sizes, some low and some lofty, some with gable fronts and lattice windows, some up steps and some down steps, shops with parlour windows, and parlours which should be shops, and doors as diverse as the windows ; in short, all the picturesque glory of irregularity. THE WEAR. 5 Old Elvet, which, situated at right angles, looks up the hill as if with a self-satisfied smirk, is, on the contrary, a broad open street, comparatively modern, or modernised by the abundant introduction of sash windows, panelled doors, and stucco, or painted plaster; though here and there an outside shutter carries one back to the period when this story opens.

Chapter II. The Waif

Let the leaves fade and drop from the trees I have attempted to picture, let summer pass into winter, and the snow fall thick and heavily, whilst we return to South Street, and mount the summit of the steep hill in the light of the Christ mas moon. There, from the windows of a large old house overlooking the swollen and angry Wear, the light glowed through crim son curtains in the lower rooms, tingeing the snow beneath, or gleamed through the white blinds above, showing that, from "garret to basement," Christmas kept his state. A babe had been baptised that day, and the season ushered in with a ceremony well befitting it; Mr. Marsh, a well-built, hearty specimen of the hospitable north-country gentleman, about thirty years of age, the owner of the house and the father of the infant, considering it the most auspicious time for so important a rite.

His wife was a kindly little body, to whom he had been married four or five years, and this their first child. Baby Eva, a tiny pink atom of humanity, lost in a mist of lace and muslin, was the cynosure of the evening, mother and sponsors following in their turns. She was kissed and petted, fondled and admired, as surely no baby ever was before; and if not literally bom with a silver spoon in her mouth, friends took care she had no lack of such that day. Mr. Hesketh, her godfather, placed in a hand almost too small to grasp it, a costly coral and bells; whilst the god mothers respectively provided a richly embroidered robe and cloak for an infant whose wardrobe was already more than •complete. Forlorn children shiver in rags ! Did the thought occur to these good ladies, plying industrious needles and straining their eyes in decorating the finest of muslin and merino, at how small a cost of labour and coin a poor child might be comfortably clad ?

The point is debatable. Baby's eyes grew weary; she signified her aversion to kissing very intelligibly, so nurse (that important personage at a christening) was called in, and the bundle of lace and muslin passed to regions remote, to be disrobed and lulled to sleep on cushions of down beneath a silken quilt. Baby gone, song and dance succeeded ; merry games were called for by merry lips, games which made the mistletoe a necessity. The "slipper" was hunted, the "trencher" turned, the " old coach" door worn off its hinges, and " Buff said ' Buff' to all his men." Then there was one of those lulls in the pas time, so necessary to refresh the panting players and prepare for further frolic, when even conversation is at ebb tide. Mr. Marsh had drawn his pretty wife into the recess of the window, and holding back the heavy curtains, bade her look out on the still night, which had somehow fascinated him with its silvery light.

" See, Eveline, how calm and peaceful is all without, how brilliant the moonbeams — how delicate the cobweb tracery of snow-wreathed branches against the clear sky ; even the solemn music of the river seems a pæan to Christmas! How beautiful, and yet how solitary and cold ! and with what a terrible rush the river runs ! What a contrast to the warmth and light within ! — Come, darling, let us close the curtains, something chills me, I hope," — what, remained unsaid. A piercing shriek rang through the clear air; — a heavy splash into the swollen river. THE WAIE. 7 With blanched faces the startled guests, one and all, rushed out, and hurried to the riverside ; some by the ordinary path and steps close by; others, more adventurous, leapt over the low wall, down the rugged bank, crushing snow and brushwood in their eager haste.

Neighbours, also alarmed, flocked to the spot, and in less time than it takes to tell, the paths and steep woody banks were crowded with white-faced men and women, rushing to and fro in wild confusion, earnest but helpless ; not the least eager the dwarf Count whose own days were well-nigh spent. Alas! the earliest there was all too late: the moon, gleaming so coldly, revealed a woman struggling for a moment in the stream below the foaming falls, and now, some distance down, hurrying onwards in that seething flood through an arch of the ancient bridge to that darker arch which spans the space between Time and Eternity. There was no hope of rescue : none ! The stoutest swimmer would have been a reed in such a flood; for the Wear, foaming and frothing in countless eddies, was like a seething cauldron ; and the poor woman " gone to her death" so sadly, as it were, in the very presence of mirth and festal, would be miles away ere morn, a swollen corpse.

What was that dark object by the path, which Mr. Marsh stumbled over as he turned slowly to retrace his steps? " Goodness ! that is the cry of an infant ! " Surely enough, there, wrapped in an old check shawl, was a child more than six months old, with a wail feeble as that of one newly born. Securing the poor waif, kind-hearted Mr. Marsh hastened to the house, whither many of the more apathetic or selfish of his guests had preceded him, called " nurse " from the crowd, and gave the little orphan to her charge, bespeaking for it every attention, whilst they crowded round the fireplace to shake off their chilliness, and wonder. " Give it to me, Charlie," said the compassionate voice of Mrs. Marsh. " Poor little motherless bairn, I will be a mother to you ! " and tears rolled down her cheeks as she removed the shawl and revealed a babe, with large black eyes in sunk and purpled sockets, whose features, pinched with cold and want, seemed marked by that hand which had only now sealed its mother's eyes and breath.

" You surely do not mean to keep the dirty little wretch ! " exclaimed Mrs. Hesketh, a mature bride of some six weeks, who had, as a last chance, married a still more mature widower. " Indeed I do, if Charlie will permit me. How could I cast out the helpless little thing whose mother sank to her awful death in my very sight — on Christmas Eve too ? " Mrs. Hesketh lifted her shoulders and eyebrows, and pulled down the corners of her mouth, but spoke no word. It was needless, the gesture was sufficient. "Keep her, by all means, dear Eveline; she is a Christmas gift for you, a companion for our Eva. How know we but the light and warmth in our snug rooms, the sounds of music and rejoicing, jarred so harshly on yon poor suicide, worn with wrong, and want, and penury, that the very contrast goaded her to madness, and in despair she flung her child to our mercy, herself to the mercy of God !

" " Upon my word, Marsh, you are quite eloquent, and — quite right," struck in Mr. Hesketh, with a slight variation of tone. "Still, I do not think /should like to undertake the charge." "I should think not, indeed!" sharply exclaimed his wife. "What should we do with beggars' brats? The workhouse is the fittest place for them ! " "Mrs. Hesketh, we think differently," said Mr. Marsh, quietly. " I am proud of my wife's motherly instinct, and feel that we cannot better close the day which recognised our child a Christian, than by performing a Christian's duty to the little outcast so thrown by Providence in our path. Provided no one claims her, she is henceforth ours." Mrs. Hesketh once more shrugged her shoulders in con temptuous silence, but just then the chimes came booming across the water — a deafening peal to welcome Christmas and Christmas charity.

THE WAIF. 9 Mrs. Marsh had meanwhile carried the poor morsel of life and rags to the nursery, fed it, and warmed its frozen limbs, seen it washed and dressed from Eva's ample stores, and when at length it fell into a calm sleep, blissfully unconscious of what it had lost or what it had gained, she returned to her friends; while the bells rang merrily out, and the ding dong pealed over Durham, wakening all sleepers but such as the one then sleeping in the waters of the Wear. The infant dreamed in its warm bed — did the mother dream in her cold one ? Speculation was rife at the abundantly-spread supper-table as to the who, what, how, and wherefore of the startling and tragic event of the night. But was there one amongst the guests who could picture to himself the scene enacted on the river's brink ere he reached it?

Who saw the maddened woman, bonnetless and shoeless, as she crossed the city, seeking by her very wretchedness the shelter and comfort she was too proud to ask, and no Christian proffered, although it was Christmas Eve ? Who saw her crouched beneath the shadow of the lonely arch of the Prebend's Bridge, grawing a crust that had been flung to her; huddling her babe to the breast that could not nourish it; with wrong and outrage seething and surging in her brain like the flood beneath her feet — resistless, uncon trollable ? Who saw the gibing fiends mocking her misery — taunting her memory with thoughts of home, of all she had been, all she might have been, and all she had become — with pictures of feasting and revelry throughout the land, of brides and babes in perfumed rooms and soft attire?

And then, who saw her rise and pace the path with hurried feet and frenzied mien — pause — hurry on — then turn and turn again, as rose or fell the impulse in her mind to hide her shame and sorrow in the wave, and save her babe from sin and sorrow too ? Who heard her prayers, her agony — saw the convulsive clutchings of her infant, the passionate kisses rained upon its face, the torturing struggle to keep her child or leave it — her wavering, her wrestling with the demon in her breast, and lastly, the final wrench, when, flinging down her child, she left it to the world from which she fled in desperation? Ah, no ! Mortals saw none of this, and what they did see had not stopped the feast; albeit the ladies feigned loss of appetite, and all sat down as though half ashamed to sup so near a newly-made grave.

But the Christmas bells were jubilant, their tones floated sweetly on the air above the suicide, the silence, and the snow— and Mr. Marsh's friends, cheered by the good things on the ample board, as well as by the rejoicing chimes, rose refreshed and strengthened against a sorrow not their own. The morrow brought Mrs. Marsh gossiping visitors in shoals to see the little orphan — visitors who made their comments, and pressed on from house to house, rolling their snowball of news until it o'ertopped the town, which became but an arena to discuss the sad catastrophe, and Mr. Marsh's right to think for himself. Grave divines shook their heads and sighed over the sin of suicide; untempted misses wondered if the mother had been married ; matrons speculated on the extra care and cost of rearing a strange young child in a household; their spouses on the folly of such self-encumbrance in a couple as likely as not to have a large family of their own ; the parish authorities congratulated themselves on being well rid of a troublesome burthen; and Mrs. Hesketh became pro verbial and prophetic on the occasion, asserting that " the blood of the mother must run in the child !

" and she knew "no good would come of it!" None, even the most captious, would, however, deny to the Marshes the grace of Christian charity, and they had that within their own breasts which rendered them imper vious to calumny, had it assailed them. New Year's Day brought to the church of St. Oswald, THE WAIF. 11 where little Eva had been baptised, another but more unobtrusive baptismal party, when the child of adoption received the name of Rhoda, to which Mr. Marsh appended the surname of Wearbank, from the spot on which she was found, no mark being on her clothes to reveal her own patronymic ; if, indeed, she could claim one. A week's care and nourishing diet had wrought a marvellous change in her; the puny little atomy had grown plump and rosy, her dark eyes no longer gleamed from sunken sockets, the wailing cry had given place to dim pling smiles, and, apparelled as she was in robes befitting her new station in the world, none would have recognised in that healthy child the " beggar's brat " whom Mrs. Hes keth and others would so charitably have consigned to the workhouse.

Chapter III. Poison

Years passed. No other children came to " put out of joint the noses " of Eva and her cousin, as she was called, the difference of age being 'so marked as to disprove twin sisterhood, whilst an elder sister's claim was still more ob viously inadmissible for Rhoda. Care and tenderness were bestowed on each alike; no possible distinction was made in their dress, treatment, or training. Only very close observation, coupled with a knowledge of the minute springs of action, could detect the difference between natural parental affection and that arising from sympathy and generous feeling. Mr. Marsh had enjoined on his dependents strict silence regarding the supposed parentage of Rhoda ; and his servants valued him too much to dispute his will. The girls grew up together, unconscious they were not akin; slept in each other's arms, went hand-in-hand to the same school, affectionate as cousins should be, although they were in all other respects dissimilar as morn and night.

Eva, a blue-eyed laughing little fairy, with a halo of flaxen hair around her head, broke into a shady room like a sunbeam, taking the unconscious heart by surprise; whilst with quiet step and voice, Rhoda seemed to claim her place in your regard with the assumption of an empress, as she shook back her tangled web of Ethiop curls, and lit her lustrous eyes. "She's a strange bairn," Martin, the groom and gardener, would say in confidence to Nancy, the cook, " ah de think there's summat uncanny aboot her ! " " Hout, man ! did ye nivvor see a bairn wi' black hair an' eyes afore, that ye mun call the poor thing 'uncanny'? Ye'd best not let maister hear ye ! " would be Nancy's swift retort. A sagacious shake of the head, and the words, " Nay, hinny, it's not her hair, nor her een, though they're wild enough, but her mouth — her mouth that's uncanny," would be his common reply.

"And what's the matter with her mouth, I should like to know? It's sweet enough to wile some young fellow's heart away, afore many years gang by." " Ay, hinny, sweet enough when t' bairn's pleased, but her lips fit ower close to win me; en' ah've seen th' top 'un curl up, and t' corners spread, an' her een strike fire loike th' flints, whan shoo was put oot, an' Miss Eva wad not let her have a' her own way; an' nivvor a word of her mind can squeeze its way atween them barred doors ! " " So much the more to her credit, man. I wish all of us could keep our tongues between our teeth when t' temper's up. A still tongue shows a wise head." " Ay, woman, but a wyese head on a bairn's shoulders is, ester all's said an' done, doonreet uncanny, an' ah'li stick te it." POISON. 13 " Hout, I've no patience wi' thy uncanny talk ; hold thy tongue for a born fool."

Irritated Nancy would bustle about in her indignation, whilst Martin shook his head unsatisfied, and so the kitchen controversy, often renewed, and in pretty similar language, would invariably terminate. No echoes of these disputes penetrated into the parlour to disturb the perfect contentment of Mr. and Mrs. Marsh with regard to Rhoda, and as the two girls themselves never came into collision, no idea of possible evil in the future ever crossed their benevolent minds. They were not blind to the difference of temperament, but it created no surprise, the tint of Rhoda's skin faintly indi cating gipsy or foreign extraction, and the good pair only smiled at the loftiness of her general bearing ; whilst Mr. Marsh, always disposed to be humorous, appeared to see something comical in her childish grandeur and patronage of their Eva.

For some time after her adoption, Durham, or one half of it, regarded Mr. Marsh as an innovator — an incendiary, who had brought a bombshell into their midst; but other people's private affairs drove Mr. Marsh's out of the public mind, and the matter seemed well nigh forgotten by the time the children were old enough to require playmates, or to give juvenile parties. Then the story came into circulation once more, and the first invitation created a ferment amongst the mammas. The grave question, whether Miss Wearbank was eligible to be received into respectable society, was mooted in various quarters, and gave rise to a variety of opinions, more or less warmly expressed. In most cases Mr. Marsh's position was a passport for his protegee; some few condes cended to permit the desired family intercourse, but not a few rejected the advance as an insult, and sent cold negatives to the invitations.

The little damsels in short frocks and long trousers knew nothing of the serious point under discussion, and received or visited their little friends in frocks and trousers in all the blissful ignorance of early childhood. And so matters progressed until the girls attained their twelfth year. It was then judged advisable to place the care of their education in more efficient hands than heretofore. Consequently, after some little deliberation, they were sent to a first-class " Establishment for Young Ladies," in the Bailey — the aristocratic quarter, in close proximity and running parallel with Palace, Cathedral, and Castle. It was therefore within the curve of the horse-shoe, and, whilst its chief entrance was from Saddler Street (where a gate and portcullis once stood), there was a passage thence to the opposite side, either through the cloisters or under an arch way from Palace Green, by a pathway beneath the Cathedral walls, and so on over the Prebend's Bridge to the outer bank, or by another path beneath the Castle to Framwell gate and the city.

Here, under the Misses Robson's care, as education pro gressed, the difference between the two developed rapidly; not that affection underwent a change, but character asserted itself. Eva learned, and learned well, as any tractable, intelligent child, desirous to please, might ; but Rhoda devoured know ledge, so to speak ; no task she was set but she would accomplish; difficulties she set at defiance, and her teachers regarded her as a marvel, although a sort of unpleasant awe mingled with their admiration. Work she disliked ; she would turn with ill-disguised contempt from the embroidery frame at which Eva sat for hours shading a violet, or giving the blush to a rose, or she would throw down her own needlework with a yawn at her own idleness. She was imperious, too, and had queened it over Eva so long by virtue of her stronger mind, and few months' advanced age, that she assumed a like position in the school — a position under protest; but Rhoda's will was dominant.