next visit.

"It is well," said the stern old lady; "my brother Bridgenorth hath
permitted you to make a Herodias of Alice, and teach her dancing. You
have only now to find her a partner for life--I shall neither meddle nor
make more in their affairs."

In fact, the triumph of Dame Deborah, or rather of Dame Nature, on this
occasion, had more important effects than the former had ventured to
anticipate; for Mrs. Christian, though she received with all formality
the formal visits of the governante and her charge, seemed thenceforth
so pettish with the issue of her remonstrance, upon the enormity of
her niece dancing to a little fiddle, that she appeared to give up
interference in her affairs, and left Dame Debbitch and Alice to manage
both education and housekeeping--in which she had hitherto greatly
concerned herself--much after their own pleasure.

It was in this independent state that they lived, when Julian first
visited their habitation; and he was the rather encouraged to do so by
Dame Deborah, that she believed him to be one of the last persons in the
world with whom Mistress Christian would have desired her niece to be
acquainted--the happy spirit of contradiction superseding, with Dame
Deborah, on this, as on other occasions, all consideration of the
fitness of things. She did not act altogether without precaution
neither. She was aware she had to guard not only against any reviving
interest or curiosity on the part of Mistress Christian, but against the
sudden arrival of Major Bridgenorth, who never failed once in the year
to make his appearance at the Black Fort when least expected, and
to remain there for a few days. Dame Debbitch, therefore, exacted of
Julian, that his visits should be few and far between; that he should
condescend to pass for a relation of her own, in the eyes of two
ignorant Manx girls and a lad, who formed her establishment; and that
he should always appear in his angler's dress made of the simple
_Loughtan_, or buff-coloured wool of the island, which is not subjected
to dyeing. By these cautions, she thought his intimacy at the Black Fort
would be entirely unnoticed, or considered as immaterial, while, in the
meantime, it furnished much amusement to her charge and herself.

This was accordingly the case during the earlier part of their
intercourse, while Julian was a lad, and Alice a girl two or three years
younger. But as the lad shot up to youth, and the girl to womanhood,
even Dam