ach other affectionately.

Then Frances, escorted by Phebe, set off, and Jacinth ran up-stairs to
get ready for her expedition with her aunt.

CHAPTER V.

AN OLD STORY.

That Saturday afternoon passed very pleasantly for both the sisters.
Jacinth earned her aunt's commendation by her quick neat-handedness and
accuracy, and a modicum of praise from Miss Mildmay meant a good deal.
The little misunderstanding of the morning, ending as it had done in
making the aunt, an essentially just woman, blame herself for hasty
judgment, had drawn her and her elder niece closer together than had yet
been the case. And no doubt there was a substratum of resemblance in
their natures, deeper and more real than the curious capricious likeness
which had struck Marmaduke so oddly--which was indeed perhaps but a
casual coming to the surface of a real underlying similarity.

Things were turning out quite other than the young uncle in his anxiety
had anticipated.

'If fate had sent me Jacinth alone,' thought Miss Mildmay, 'I rather
think we should have got on very well, and have fitted into each other's
ways. There is so much more in her than in Frances. I strongly suspect,
in spite of her looks, that Jacinth takes after our side of the
house--she almost seems older than Eugenia in some ways--whereas
Frances, I suppose, is her mother over again.'

But here she checked herself. Any implied disparagement of her
sister-in-law she did not, even in her secret thoughts, intend or
encourage, for Alison Mildmay was truly and firmly attached to her
brother's wife, widely different though their characters were.

'Frances is really only a baby,' she went on thinking. 'There's no
telling as yet what she will turn out.'

Jacinth on her side was conscious of a good deal of congeniality between
herself and her aunt. It was not the congeniality of affection, often
all the stronger for a certain amount of intellectual dissimilarity, or
differences of temperament, thus leaving scope for complementary
qualities which love welds together and cements; it was scarcely even
that of friendliness. It consisted in a certain satisfaction and
approval of Miss Mildmay's ways of seeing and doing things. The girl
felt positive pleasure in her aunt's perfect 'method;' in the clear and
well-considered manner in which her time was mapped out; in the quick
discrimination with which she divined what would be the right place and
treatment for each girl in her c