“Hush, hush!” whispered his mother, for Charley’s high spirits and audacity always terrified her when exhibited in his father’s presence:  “they have found they have a common acquaintance, and so made friends.”

“Father didn’t know Swedenborg, did he?” answered the young man, slyly.  “My belief is, he has fallen in love with her.  I saw a black cat on the stairs.  She can make any body do it, as I was telling Aggey” (the young rogue had been to Soho since the morning); “I shall be the next victim, no doubt.  It’s no use saying to myself, ’Thou shalt not marry thy grandmother.’  Her charms are too powerful for the rubric.  You’ll see she’ll not say grace.”

Mr. Charles was right in that particular of his diagnosis of their new guest.  Mrs. Basil did treat that devotional formula, which Mrs. Coe never omitted to pronounce, in spite of her husband’s contemptuous shrugs, with considerable indifference.  She sat opposite to Charley, and more than once, when he looked up suddenly, he caught her gaze fixed earnestly upon him.  Those wondrous eyes of hers yet shone forth bright and clear; her cheeks were still smooth; and, though her brow had many a wrinkle, they were the footprints of thought and care, rather than of years.

The conversation, as was natural where the company and the guest were strangers to each other, turned upon the topics of the day, and the objects in the room, some of which, as we know, were sufficiently remarkable.  At Charley’s request Mrs. Basil once more narrated the story of the skull; and then epitomized, with caustic tongue, the biography of poor Joanna.  Up stairs, she said, she had one of that lady’s “seals”—­a passport to eternal bliss—­which she would bestow as a present upon the young gentleman opposite.  Her cynical humor delighted Charley, and won the approbation of his father—­not the less so, perhaps, since he saw it annoyed his wife.

Poor Harry was a simple well-meaning woman in her way, and, had the circumstances of her life been less exceptional, would have earned the reputation of a good creature and steadfast chapel-goer.  But our lives do not always fall in the places most suitable to our dispositions; the restive are often compelled to run in harness; and the quiet low-action goers, who would welcome restraint, are left without guide, and with no course marked out for them.  Thus it was with Mrs. Coe.  The situation in which Fate had placed her it was altogether beyond her powers to fill.  She knew that Mrs. Basil was rapidly ingratiating herself with her husband, and so far was furthering their common plan; but, notwithstanding its supreme importance, she shrank from the means that were bidding fair to accomplish her own end.  She shuddered at her husband’s vulgar ejaculations of assent and approval; at her son’s thoughtless laughter; at this woman’s sparkling and audacious talk, which seemed so purposeless, and yet was so full of design and craft.  She had feared her