xcellent woman, the inquisitive,
benevolent despot of all the Maxwell villages; and one of the soundest
Tories still left to a degenerate party and a changing time. Her brother
and her great-nephew represented to her the flower of human kind; she
had never been capable, and probably never would be capable, of
quarrelling with either of them on any subject whatever. At the same
time she had her rights with them. She was at any rate their natural
guardian in those matters, relating to womankind, where men are
confessedly given to folly. She had accordingly kept a shrewd eye in
Aldous's interest on all the young ladies of the neighbourhood for many
years past; knew perfectly well all that he might have done, and sighed
over all that he had so far left undone.

At the present moment, in spite of the even good-breeding with which she
knitted and chattered beside Marcella, she was in truth consumed with
curiosity, conjecture, and alarm on the subject of this Miss Boyce.
Profoundly as they trusted each other, the Raeburns were not on the
surface a communicative family. Neither her brother nor Aldous had so
far bestowed any direct confidence upon her; but the course of affairs
had, notwithstanding, aroused her very keenest attention. In the first
place, as we know, the mistress of Maxwell Court had left Mellor and its
new occupants unvisited; she had plainly understood it to be her
brother's wish that she should do so. How, indeed, could you know the
women without knowing Richard Boyce? which, according to Lord Maxwell,
was impossible. And now it was Lord Maxwell who had suggested not only
that after all it would be kind to call upon the poor things, who were
heavily weighted enough already with Dick Boyce for husband and father,
but that it would be a graceful act on his sister's part to ask the girl
and her mother to luncheon. Dick Boyce of course must be made to keep
his distance, but the resources of civilisation were perhaps not unequal
to the task of discriminating, if it were prudently set about. At any
rate Miss Raeburn gathered that she was expected to try, and instead of
pressing her brother for explanations she held her tongue, paid her call
forthwith, and wrote her note.

But although Aldous, thinking no doubt that he had been already
sufficiently premature, had said nothing at all as to his own feelings
to his great-aunt, she knew perfectly well that he had said a great deal
on the subject of Miss Boyce and her mo