Broken to harness. A story of English domestic life

Front matter

Yes, it was he!" — P. 318. Front. % ot feglisjr iirawstic fife BY EDMUND YATES Author of " After Office Hours," " Pages in Waiting," &>r., c&v. - Pity me. Captain Lyster! and why?"— P. s; NEW EDITION LONDON JOHN MAXWELL & CO., 122, FLEET STREET [AU Rights of Translation are reserved.] % Sims of «itglts|[ gorotstk fife ET EDMUND YATES " Mit dem Giirtel, mit dem Scbleier, Eeisst der schoner "Wahn entzwei." LONDON JOHN MAXWELL AND COMPANY 122 FLEET STREET M DCCC LXV. [__Il . i-Jifs reserved.-] L0_*D0_T : ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W. JfirsmMr TO THE MARQUIS CLANRICARDE, K.P. IK EEMEMBRANCE OF CONSTANT KINDNESS. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. Mb. Churchill's Ideas abe Monastic . . I II. Down at Bissett 9 III. Starting the Game 23 TV. The Commissioner's Yiews aee Matrimonial 31 V. " There's Nothing half so sweet in Life" 43 VI.

The Commissioner's Shell explodes . . 57 VII. Touching a Proposal C8 VIII. Touching another Proposal ... 76 IX. "A little proud, but full of Pity" . . 81 X. At the Tin-Tax Office, No. 120 . . . 88 XL With the Secretary 98 Xn. Where Mr. Pringle went to ... 110 XIII. Mr. Prescott's Proceedings .... 120 XIV. Miss Lexden on Matrimony .... 127 XV. Mother and Son 143 XVI. " For better, for worse" .... 154 XV II. Mining Operations 101 XVIII. The Schboders at Home . . . .171 XIX. The Old or the New? 188 XX. The Churchills at Home .... 190 XXI. The Flybynights 211 XXII. Me. Simnel at The Den 225 XXIII. Mb. Beeesfobd in pursuit .... 234 XXTV. Barbara's first Lesson in the Manege . 245 XXV. A Garden-pabty at Uplands . . . 255 XXVI. Showing who were " Pigott and Wells" . 270 XXVII. Weaving the Web 27G VI CONTENTS.

CHAP. TAOE XXVIII. Tightening the Curb 291 XXIX. Mr. Scadgers pays a Visit .... 307 XXX. After the Storm 321 XXXI. The Paper Bullet 336 XXXII. Half-revealed 348 XXXIII. The House of Mourning .... 364 XXXIV. Et tu Brute 1 380 XXXV. Balthazar 390 XXXVI. " Be sure your Sin will find you out" . 399 XXXVII. Ministering Angels . . . . 408 XXXVIII. Under Pressure 421 XXXIX. "We kissed again with Tears" . . .435 XL. Going Home 446 XLI. The Day after 455 XLn. and last

Chapter II. Doavn At Bissett

At the very first sign of the season's breaking up, Sir Marmaduke Wentworth was in the habit of leaving his toAvn-house in Curzon Street, and proceeding to his country-seat of Bissett Grange. Gumble, his butler and bodyservant, was the first person officially informed of the intended flight; but long before his master spoke to him, that far-seeing man had made up his mind, and arranged his plans accordingly. "Flitherses gone to-day, eh!" he would say to himself, as, in the calm, cool evening, he lounged against the jams of the street-door (Gumble was never seen in the area) and looked up to the opposite house. "Shutters up, and Flitherses hoff! Some German bath or other, no doubt; elber-shakin' for the old man, and forrin' counts for the young ladies. Lord Charles less last week; he'll be takin' his rubber at Spaw now as nateral as at the Club.- The old Barrin has been sent away somcwheres; and I'll bet a pound in two days my guv'nor says ' Hoff!' " And he would have won his bet.

So soon as there was the slightest appearance of a move among the people of his circle; so soon as he found " shall have left town" given as an answer to an invite to one of his cosey little dinners; before Goodwood afiorded the pleasantest excuse for the laziest of racing and the happiest of lunching; while flannel-clad gentlemen yet perspired copiously at Lord's, defending the Avickets of Marylebone against the predatory incursions of " Perambulators" or "Eccentrics;" when Finsburyites were re turning from then* fortnight at Ramsgate, and while Dalstonians yet lingered on the pier at Southend, — old Marmaduke WentAvorth would give his household brigade the order to retreat, and, at then* head, would march down upon Bissett Grange. . , And he was right ; for there was not a nobler old house, nor prettier grounds, in the broad county ot Sussex, where it stood.

Contrast is the great thing, after all: tall men marry short women; the most thick set nursery-maids struggle a-tiptoe to keep step with the lengthiest members of the Foot-Guards ; Plimmms the poet, who is of the Sybarite-roseleaf order, sighs for Miss Crupper the ecuydre, who calls a horse an oss, and a donkey a hass; and so you, if you had been staying at Brighton, and had gone on an excursion at half a-crown an hour into the inner country, would have fallen in love with Bissett Grange. For, weary of the perpetual hoarse murmur of the sea, now thundering its rage in tremendous waves, now shrieking its lamenta tion in long hissing back currents; sick of the monotony of the " long-backed bushless doAvns," so cold and bare and Avind-swept, echoing to the eternal plaint of the curlew, and shutting off the horizon with a dreary never-ending shoulder-blade of blank turf,— you, if you were lucky in your choice, and had a driver with a soul beyond the Steine and aspirations exceeding the Lewes Road, would have come upon, at a distance of some five miles from Brighton, a little one-storied porter's lodge, nestling in ivy so deep that the dear parasite had it in its embrace, chimneys and all.

Big, heavy, and wooden were the lodge-gates; none of your pretty, light, elegant Coalbrookdale innovations. Gates, in Sir Marmaduke Wentworth' s idea, were things to keep impertinent pry ing people out ; and as such they could not be made too cumbrous or too opaque for his pleasure. They Avere very high as well as very heavy; so, if you had come with your 'cute driver in your fly excursion, you would have seen nothing but the quaint twisted chimneys; and even for that view you must have mounted unto the box. Save the friends of the OAA*ner, no one, in Marma duke WentAvorth's time, had ever passed the lodge, or rather, I should say, reached the house. Visitors to DOAVN AT BISSETT. 11 Brighton and Worthing, dying of ennui, had besieged the lodge, and implored permission to walk in the grounds; artists had asked to be alloAved to sketch the house ; a " gentleman engaged upon the press " had •written to say that he was sure there must be a legend connected Avith some chamber, if he might only be per mitted to explore the mansion; and one man, a photographer, bribed the lodge-keeper's grand-daughter Avith a piece of elecampane, and, in the absence of the legiti mate portress, passed the gate.

He had proceeded about a couple of hundred yards up the avenue, when he Avas met by Sir Marmaduke, who had just tinned out for his leisurely afternoon ride. The sight of the itine rant professor Avith his travelling camera roused the old gentleman in an instant ; he set spurs to his cob, hurried off to the intruder, and tapped him smartly on the back with his whip. One instant's glance revealed to him the whole affair: it was not a travelling Punch, whom he would have sent into the kitchen; it was not a man from the Missionary Society, whom he would have had ducked in the pond; it was — tant soit peu — an artist; and for art of any kind, however humble, old Marmaduke had a regard. So when the trembling man looked up, and, divided between a notion of " cheeking the swell," or being impudent, and running away, or being cowardly, hit upon a middle course, and, guarding his head, at which nothing had been aimed, exclaimed, "Now, then!

What are you at? Who's hurting you?" all the old gentleman did was to bend from his saddle, to seize the intruder by the lobe of his ear, to turn him completely round, and, pointing to the gate, to utter in a hissing Avhisper the phrase " Go away, man!" When the photographer attempted to explain, the ear-pressure Avas intensified, and the " Go away, man!" uttered more loudly; at the third repetition, the photo grapher wrung his ear from the old gentleman's singers, and ran away abjectly. "Collodion and Clumpsoles; or, the Homes of the British Aristocracy in the Camera: being Reminiscences of a Peripatetic Photographer," therefore, contained no view of Bissett Grange; which was to be regretted, as neither The Hassocks, the Rector's residence, nor The Radishes, the seat of Sir Hipson Hawes, the lord of the manor, both of which figured extensively in the photo graphic publication, was to be compared Avith Marma duke Wentworth's ancestral mansion.

The elm-avenue extended from the lodge to the house, — nearly half a mile, — and through the trees you saAV the broad expanse of the park, covered Avith that beautiful soft turf Avhich is in the highest perfection in Sussex, and AA'hich afforded pasture for hundreds of dappled deer, Avho would raise then* heads at the sound of approaching footsteps or carriage-Avheels, and, after peering forward earnestly with outstretched necks at the intrusion, would wheel round and start off at a peculiar sling trot, gradually merging into the most graceful of gallops. Immediately in front of the porch, and only divided from it by the carriage-sweep, was an enormous flower bed, sloping towards the sides, and culminating in the centre, — the pride of the head-gardener's soul. Right and left of the house were two arches, exactly alike.

Passing through that to the left, you came upon the stables and coach-houses, of which there is little to be said, save that they were old-fashioned, and what the helpers called " ill-conwenient;" and that the fine London grooms who came doAvn Avith their master's hacks and carriage-horses in the autumn — Sir Marmaduke was never at Bissett during the hunting season — used to curse them freely as a set of tumbledown old sheds, fit only for jobs and fly-'osses. And yet the old quadrangle, environed by the stable-buildings, Avith their red-tiled roofs and their slate-coloured half-hatch doors, each duly bearing its horse-shoe and its hecatomb of mouse and stoat skeletons, was picturesque, more especially of an evening, when the setting sun gleamed on the quaint old clock-turret, ivy-covered and swallow-haunted, and steeped in a rich crimson glow the pretty cottage of old Martin, erst head-groom, now a superannuated pensioner — old Martin, who was never so happy as when babbling of bygone days, and who " minded the time " when the stables were full of blood horses, and Avhen Master Marmaduke (the present proprietor) rode Saucy Sally over all the raspers in the county.

Through the other arch you came upon the gardens of the Grange. Immediately before you lay a broad expanse of lawn, — such smooth, soft turf as is only met Avith in England, and only there in well-to-do places. Short, crisp, and velvety was the grass, kept with the greatest care, and rolled and moAvn with the most undeviating punctuality; for Sir Marmaduke Avas proud of his lawn, and liked to sit out there in his high-backed rustic seat on the hot August evenings, placidly smoking his cigar, and occasionally raising his head to be fanned by the soft sea-breeze which came blowing over the neighbouring doAvns. He would as soon have thought' of alloAving a servant to take a liberty Avith him as of permitting any one to drive a croquet-iron into that laAvn, or to attempt to play any game on it.

BetAveen the house and the laAvn ran a broad gravelled walk, passing down which you came upon the orchard and upon the fig-garden, which was the glory of the county, and was enclosed with an old red-brick wall, which itself looked ripe and ruddy. To the right lay the kitchen-garden, — a fertile slope of land in the highest state of cultivation, dotted every here and there with huge lights and frames, and spread nets, and overgroAvn cucumbers, and bursting marrows; for though Sir Marmaduke cared but little for flowers, he was a great fruit-grower, and, next to seeing his pines and melons on his own table (where, gloAving on the old ancestral Wentworth plate, they looked like a study for Lance), his great gratification was to bear away with them the prizes from the Horticultural Shows in the neighbourhood.

Beyond the orchard was a large field, knoAvn as the Paddock, whither the croquet-players and the archers were relegated, and where the turf was almost as smooth as that of the sacred laAvn itself. Over all, — house, laAvn, orchard, kitchen-garden, and paddock, and far aAvay across the surrounding downs— there was a delicious sense of calm and quiet ; a feeling which was heightened rather than lessened by the inhabitants of a rookery established in the tall elm-trees bordering the Paddock, and who, as they sailed over the grounds of the Grange, would express their approbation by one single solemn caw. The house faced the avenue, and was a queer, odd, square block, by no means picturesque, but quaintly ugly, something like an old-fashioned child, whose decidedly curious features, out of all drawing and impossible to be admired, yet have something humorously lovable in their expression.

A staring red-brick house of Queen Anne's time, that ought to have been formal, and perhaps had been at some period or other, but which had undergone so many changes — had had so many gables put on here, and windows let in there, and rooms added on wherever they were wanted — as to lose all trace of its original design, and to have become of a composite style of architecture which would have driven Mr. Ruskin mad. It Avas the only gentleman's seat for miles round which was built of red brick, and not that gray stone which always looks weather-beaten and time-worn ; instead of which, the Grange had a jolly, cheery, comic expression, and when the sun gleamed on its little diamond-shaped, leaden-casemented windows, they seemed to twinkle like the eyes of a genial red-faced old gentleman at some good joke or pleasant dish.

A comfortable old house in every sense of the word, -with an enormous number of rooms, large airy spacious chambers, queer little nooks and snuggeries, long passages with pannelled partitions dividing them from other passages, partitions with occasional square windows or round eyelet-holes cut in them, wide straggling staircases Avith broad steps and broad balus trades, which no boy had ever yet been knoAvn to pass without sliding doAvn them on his stomach. A couple of queer turreted chambers, like the place where the yard measure lives in old-fashioned work-boxes, and a set of attics, low-roofed, and rather worm-eaten and mouldysmelling. These were not inhabited, for the servants had their own quarters in the western wing; a bit of eccentric building, which had been thrown out long after the original structure, and gave to the old mansion, from the back view, a comical lopsided appearance ; and when the rest of the house was filled, the bachelors were sent to what was knoAvn as the Barracks, or the Kennel, a series of jolly little rooms shut out from the respectable portion of the building by a long passage, where they kept up their OAvn fun till a very late hour of the night, where there was always an overhanging smell of tobacco, and whence, in the early mornings, there came such a roaring and clanging of shower-baths, and such a sound of hissing and sluicing and splashing, that you might ha\*e fancied yourself in the vicinity of an army of Tri tons.

Two o'clock on a hot afternoon at the end of Septem ber; and, with the exception of a few sportsmen, who are now reclining under a high hedge and lighting pipes, after a succulent repast of game-pie, cold partridge, and bitter beer, all the party at the Grange is assembled round the luncheon-table in the dining-room. That is Marma duke WentAvorth, the tall old man standing on the hearth rug, AAith his back towards the empty fire-grate. His head is perfectly bald and shining, and has but a fringe of crisp white hair; his features are what is called " aristocratic," well-shaped, and comely ; his eyes are cold, clear, gray; his lips slightly full, and his teeth sound and regular. He is in his invariable morning dress, — a blue coat Avith brass buttons, a buff waistcoat, and gray trousers with gaping dog's-eared pockets, into which his hands are always plunged.

Looking at him now, you would scarcely recognise the roue of George the Fourth's time, the Poins to the wild Prince, the hero of a hundred in trigues and escapades. In heat and turmoil, in drinking, dicing, and dancing, Marmaduke Wentworth passed his early youth; and from this debauchery he was rescued by the single passion of his life. The object of that pas sion — his cousin, a lovely girl, whose innocence won the dissipated roisterer from his evil Avays, and gave him new notions and new hopes — died Avithin three months of their engagement; and from that day Wentworth became an other man. He went abroad, and for ten years led a solitary studious life; returning to England, he brought with him his bookworm tastes; and it was long before he emerged from the seclusion of Bissett Grange, which he had inherited, and returned once more to London life.

Even then, he sought his society in a very different set to that in which he had previously shone. George the Great was dead; sailor King William had followed him to the grave; and the new men fluttering round the court of the new Queen, setting fashions and issuing social or dinances, had been cradled children when Marmaduke Wentworth had copied Brummel's cravats, or listened to Alvanley's bons mots. Even had he continued a " dandy," he would have been displeased with the " swells" to whom the dandies had given place ; and now, changed as he was into a disappointed elderly gentleman, with a bitter tongue and an intolerant spirit, his unsocial cynicism bored the new men, while their slangy flippancy disgusted him. So, in the phrase of the day, he " went in for a new excitement;" and, though his name and his appearance were as well knoAvn in London as those of the Duke of Wellington, there Avere but few people of his OAvn status or time of life who were retained on an intimate footing.

Some few old friends, who themselves had suffered heart-shipAvreck, or seen their argosies of early feelings go down in sight of port, claimed com panionship Avith the querulous, crotchety companion of their youth, and had then* claims allowed. His odd, quaint savagery, his utter contempt for the recognised laws of politeness, his free speaking, and his general eccentricity, had a great charm for young people of both sexes; and if they had any thing in them to elevate them above the ordinary run of yea-and-nay young persons, they invariably found their advances responded to. Then there was a great attraction for young people in the so ciety which they met at one of Marmaduke's dinners, — men whose names were before the world ; an occasional cabinet-minister sweetening the severities of office Avith a little pleasant relaxation in company where he might take the mask from his face and the gag from his mouth ; authors of note ; rising artists ; occasionally an actor or two, — all these Avere to be found round Wentworth's table.

The old gentleman was in London from January to July. During that time he gave four dinner-parties a week (one of them, I regret to say, and generally the pleasantest, on a Sunday), and during the other three days dined out. He was a member of the True-Blue and the Minerva Clubs, but seldom went to either ; he was admissible by the hall-porter of every theatre in London, and sometimes strayed behind the scenes and took possession of the green-room hearthrug, whence he vented remarkably free and discriminating criticisms on the actors and actresses surrounding him. He had one special butt, an old German baron of fabulous age, who was supposed to have been a page to Frederick the Great, avIio had been for thirty years in England, and had only acquired the very smallest knowledge of its language, and whose power of placidly enduring savage attacks was only equalled by the vigour of his appetite.

The Baron was never brought doAvn to Bissett ; but, as Ave have heard from Gumble, was sent off to some seaside place to recruit his digestion; whence he invariably turned up again in Curzon Street in January, with the same wig, the same dyed beard, the same broken English, and an appetite, if any thing, improved by his marine sojourn. There is a strange medley noAV collected at the Grange. That tall girl, seated at the far end of the table, with her chin leaning on her hand, is Barbara Lexden. Three years ago, when, at nineteen, she was presented, she cre ated a. furore; and eA*en now, though her first freshness is gone, she is even more beautiful — has rounded and ripened, and holds her OAvn Avith the best in toAA*n. More distingue-looking than beautiful, though, is Barbara.

Her face is a little too long for perfect oval ; her nose is very slightly aquiline, with delicately curved, thin, transparent c nostrils ; her forehead marked with two deep lines, from a curious trick of elevating her eyebroAvs when surprised, and shaded with broad thick masses of dark-broAvn hair, bound tightly round her head, taken off behind her ears, —small, and glistening like pink shells, — and terminat ing in a thick plaited clump ; sleepy, greenish-gray eyes, with long drooping lashes; a tall, undulating, pear-shaped figure, ahvays seen to best advantage in a tight-fitting dress, with a neat little collar and nun-like simple linen cuffs ; a swimming walk ; feet and ankles beyond com pare ; and hands — ah, such hands ! — not plump, slender, with long fingers, and rosy filbert nails ; such hands as Ninon de l'Enclos might have had, but such as, save on Barbara, I have only seen in wax, on black velvet, under a glass case, modelled from Lady Blessington's, and pur chased at the Gore-House Sale.

Blue was her favourite colour, violet her favourite perfume, admiration the long ing of her soul. She was never happy until every one with whom she Avas brought into contact had given in their submission to her. No matter of Avhat age or in what condition of life, all must bow. Once, during a Commemoration Week at Oxford, she completely turned various hoary heads of houses, and caused the wife of an eminent Church dignitary, after thirty years of happy marriage, to bedew her pilloAV with tears of bitter jealousy at seeing how completely the courteous old dean was fascinated by the lovely visitor; and she would laugh with saucy triumph as she heard the blunt, outspoken admiration of working-men as she sat well forward in the carriage blocked up in St. James's Street on a Draw ing-room day, or slowly creeping along the line of ve hicles which were " setting doAvn" at the Horticultural- Gardens gates.

With the exception of flirtation, in which she would have taken the highest honours, her accomplishments were neither more nor less than those of most women of her position. She played brilliantly, with a firm, dashing touch, and sang, perhaps not artistically, but with an amount of feeling thrown into her deep contralto that did frightful execution; her French was very good; her German passable, grammatical, and well phrased, but lacking the real rough accent and guttural smack. At all events, she had made the most of what schooling she had had, for it was desultory enough. Her father, the youngest son of a good family, ran away with the black eyed, ruddy-cheeked daughter of the Herefordshire par son Avith whom he went to read during the Long Vaca tion; was immediately disinherited by his father; left the University, and by the influence of his family got into a Government office; where, by his own exertions, he got into bad company, into debt, and into prison.

On his deathbed he commended his wife and daughter to the care of his elder sister, who had never married, but lived very comfortably on the property which ought to have been his. Miss Lexden came once to see her brother's Avidow and orphan in the lodgings which they had taken in Lambeth to be near the King's Bench Prison. But years of trouble had not changed the poor mother for the better, and her stately sister-in-law regarded her Avith horror. In truth, the colour had faded from her rosy cheeks, and the light died out of her black eyes long ago, and had left her a dowdy, silly, fussy little woman, Avith nothing to say. So Miss Lexden thought she could best fulfil her brother's charge Avith least trouble to herself by allowing the bereaved ones fifty pounds a year; and on this, and what she could make by AA'orking for the Berlin wool and fancy-stationery shops, the Avidow supported herself and her child for some twelve years, when she died.

Miss Lexden then took the child to the dull, stately old house in Gloucester Place, Portman Square; where, Avith the aid of a toady, the daily visit of a smug physician, an airing in a roomy old carriage draAvn by a couple of fat horses, a great deal of good eating and drinking, and a tolerable amount of society, she managed to lead a jolly godless old life. She found her niece, then fourteen years old, less ignorant and more presentable than she had imagined; for Barbara had received from her mother a sound English education, and had, on the pea-and-pigeon principle, picked up a little French and the rudiments of music. She looked and moved like a ladv, and moreover had an insolence of manner, a dc haut" en bas treatment of nearly every body, which the old lady hailed as a true Lexden characteristic, and re joiced over greatly.

So Barbara was sent to Paris for three years, and came back at seventeen finished in edu cation, ripened in beauty, and a thorough coquette at heart. Of course she had already had several affaires. several with the professors attached to the Champs-Ely sees pension; one with an Italian count, who bribed the ladies'-maid to convey notes, and who was subsequently thrashed and instructed in the savate by the Auvergnat porter of the establishment ; and one with an English gentleman coming over from Boulogne; and her aunt used to encourage her to tell of these, and would laugh at them until the tears came into her eyes. At nineteen she was presented, made her coup, and noAV for two seasons had been a reigning belle. Offers she had had in plenty, — youthful peers Avith slender in comes; middle-aged commoners, solemn, wealthy, and dull ; smug widowers, hoping to renew the sweets of matrimony, and trusting to bygone experience to keep clear of its bitters.

But Barbara refused them all; played with them, landed them, — giving them all the time the most pleasurable sensations of encouragement, as old Izaak used to tickle trout, — and then flung them back, bruised and gasping, into that muddy stream the world. She told her aunt she Avas playing for a high stake ; that she did not care for any of these men; that she did not think she ever should care for any one; under which circumstances she had better make the best bargain of her self, and go at a high price. There are plenty of women like this. We rave against cruel parents and sordid Mammon-matches; but very often the parents are merely passive in the matter. There are plenty of girls who have walnuts, or peach stones, or something equally im pressible, where their hearts should be, who have never experienced the smallest glimmer of love, and who look novm at uissett. 21 upon the possession of a carriage and an Opera-box, and admission into high society, as the acme of human en joyment.

Sitting next to Barbara is Fred Lyster, a slim, dark man, with small regular features and a splendid flowing black beard. He was educated at Addiscombe, and was out in India under Gough and Outram; did good ser vice, was highly thought of, and was thoroughly happy; when his old godfather died, and left him heir to a pro perty of three thousand a year. He returned at once to England, and became the most idle, purposeless, dreamiest of men. He had tried every thing, and found it all hollow. He had travelled on the Continent, been on the turf, gambled in stocks and railways, kept a yacht, and was bored by each and all. He had thought of going into Parliament, and went for two nights into the Speaker's Gallery; but did not pursue the idea, because he found that " the fellows talked so much." His plaintive moans against life were sources of intense amusement to his friends; and when he discovered this — which he did at once, being a very long way from a fool — he was not in the least annoyed, but rather lent himself to the idea, -and heightened his expressions of ennui and despondency.

He liked to be with Sir Marmaduke ; for the old gentle man's brusque manners and general intolerance afforded him real amusement, and he laid himself open to attack by always being more than ever drawling and inane when in his company. The baronet, who had a quick percep tion of character, knew Lyster's real worth, and often talked to him seriously about having some purpose in life; and when he only got vague and dreamy replies, he would burst out into a torrent of invective, in the middle of which Lyster would run, shrieking with laugh ter, from the room. Xext to (.'aptnin Lystf-v pits Miss Lexden, Rgrbarti^ aunt; $ f'ii, placid-looking old lady, in u Qiucen feonti v-lni h, with a Cflp covered with ribbons and iiowci*i Bfcuinl .-.ki■'vrud on to her t-kull by a conple of large pins, the knobs of which presented theniHelvea like )»■-<■on her temples.