a moment have seen the grounds, the association of the
pair being so markedly favourable to each. Its younger member carried
out the style of her aunt's presence quite as one of the accessory
figures effectively thrown into old portraits. The Duchess on the other
hand seemed, with becoming blandness, to draw from her niece the dignity
of a kind of office of state--hereditary governess of the children of
the blood. Little Aggie had a smile as softly bright as a Southern dawn,
and the friends of her relative looked at each other, according to a
fashion frequent in Mrs. Brookenham's drawing-room, in free exchange of
their happy impression. Mr. Mitchett was none the less scantly diverted
from his estimate of the occasion Mrs. Brookenham had just named to him.

"My dear Duchess," he promptly asked, "do you mind explaining to me an
opinion I've just heard of your--with marked originality--holding?"

The Duchess, her head all in the air, considered an instant her little
ivory princess. "I'm always ready, Mr. Mitchett, to defend my opinions;
but if it's a question of going much into the things that are the
subjects of some of them perhaps we had better, if you don't mind,
choose our time and our place."

"No 'time,' gracious lady, for my impatience," Mr. Mitchett replied,
"could be better than the present--but if you've reasons for wanting a
better place why shouldn't we go on the spot into another room?"

Lord Petherton, at this enquiry, broke into instant mirth. "Well, of all
the coolness, Mitchy!--he does go at it, doesn't he, Mrs. Brook? What
do you want to do in another room?" he demanded of his friend. "Upon my
word, Duchess, under the nose of those--"

The Duchess, on the first blush, lent herself to the humour of the case.
"Well, Petherton, of 'those'?--I defy him to finish his sentence!" she
smiled to the others.

"Of those," said his lordship, "who flatter themselves that when you do
happen to find them somewhere your first idea is not quite to jump at
a pretext for getting off somewhere else. Especially," he continued to
jest, "with a man of Mitchy's vile reputation."

"Oh!" Edward Brookenham exclaimed at this, but only as with quiet
relief.

"Mitchy's offer is perfectly safe, I may let him know," his wife
remarked, "for I happen to be sure that nothing would really induce Jane
to leave Aggie five minutes among us here without remaining herself to
see that we don't become improper."

"Well then if we're al