f you over bad," said Aunt Joyce with her
kindly yet rather sarcastic smile. "I am glad to see you, Mr Marshall;
hitherto we have known each other but on paper. Is this your daughter?
Why, my maid, you have a look of the dearest and blessedest woman of all
your kin--dear old Cousin Bess, that we so loved. May God make you like
her in the heart, no less than the face!"

"Indeed, Mistress, I would say Amen, with all mine heart," answered
Agnes, with a flush of pleasure.

There was a long discussion the next day upon ways and means, which
ended in the decision that Aubrey and Hans, Faith and Temperance, with
the two maids, should go forward to Selwick after a few days' rest, to
get things in order; Lady Louvaine, Edith, Lettice, Agnes, and Mr
Marshall, remaining at Minster Lovel for some weeks.

"And I'm as fain as I'd be of forty shillings," said old Rebecca to
Edith. "Eh, but the mistress just opens out when you're here like a
flower in the sunlight!"

"Now, don't you go to want Faith to tarry behind," observed Temperance,
addressing the same person: "the dear old gentlewomen shall be a deal
happier without her and her handkerchief. It shall do her good to
bustle about at Selwick, as she will if she's mistress for a bit, and
I'll try and see that she does no mischief, so far as I can."

Aunt Joyce, who was the only third person present, gave an amused little
laugh.

"How long shall she be mistress, Temperance?"

"Why, till my Lady Lettice comes," said Temperance, with a rather
perplexed look.

"For `Lady Lettice,' read `Mrs Agnes Marshall,'" was the answer of Aunt
Joyce.

"Aunt Joyce!" cried Edith. "You never mean--"

"Don't I? But I do, Mistress Bat's-Eyes."

"Well, I never so much as--"

"Never so much as saw a black cow a yard off, didst thou? See if it
come not true. Now, my maids, go not and meddle your fingers in the
pie, without you wish it not to come true. Methinks Aubrey hath scarce
yet read his own heart, and Agnes is innocent as driven snow of all
imagination thereof: nevertheless, mark my words, that Agnes Marshall
shall be the next lady of Selwick Hall. And I wouldn't spoil the pie,
were I you; it shall eat tasty enough if you'll but leave it to bake in
the oven. It were a deal better so than for the lad to fetch home some
fine town madam that should trouble herself with his mother and
grandmother but as the cuckoo with the young hedge-sparrows in his
foster-mother's nest. She's