The sudden revolution had succeeded—­as honest revolutions usually do. when any one has the courage to attempt them—­to break through a false domestic position, and supply it with a true one.  Even Miss Gascoigne was the happier for it; less worried in her mind, having no feeling of domestic responsibility, and being no longer haunted by the children.  The poor little souls! she could get on well enough with them for an hour or two at Avonside, but they had been a sore affliction to her at the Lodge.  Any woman who can not wholly set aside self is sure to be tormented by, and be a still worse torment to, children.

No; much as she pitied herself, and condoled with Aunt Maria every hour in the day, Aunt Henrietta was a great deal better in every way since she came to Avonside—­less cross, less ill-natured; even her perpetual mill-stream of talk flowed on without such violent outbreaks of wrath against the whole as had embittered the atmosphere of the Lodge.  Now, though her answer was sharp, it was not so sharp as it might have been—­would certainly have been—­a few weeks before.

“Maria, I don’t think you ever do listen to me when I’m talking.  I am afraid all I say goes in at one ear and out at the other,” which was not impossible, perhaps not unfortunate otherwise, since Miss Gascoigne talked pretty nearly all day long, Miss Grey’s whole life might have been spent in listening.  She replied, with a meek smile, “Oh no, dear Henrietta!”

“Then you surely would have made some observation on what I have been telling you—­this very extraordinary thing which Miss Smiles told me last night at the Lodge, while Mrs. Grey was singing—­as I forewarned you, Mrs. Grey sings every where now—­and her husband lets her do it—­likes it, too—­he actually told me it was a pleasure to him that his wife should make herself agreeable to other people.  They mean to give tea-parties once a week to the undergraduates at Saint Bede’s, because she says the master ought to be like a father over them, invite them and make his house pleasant to them.  Such a thing was never heard of in our days.”

“No; but I dare say dear Arnold knows best.  And what about Miss Smiles?”

“I’ve told you twenty times already, Maria, how Miss Smiles said that Mrs. Brereton said—­you know Mrs. Brereton, who has so many children, and never can keep a governess long—­that her new governess, who happens to be Miss Susan Bennett, whom, you may remember, I once got for Letitia—­told her a long story about Mrs. Grey and Sir Edwin Uniacke—­how he was an old acquaintance of hers before she was married.”

“Of Christian’s?  She never said so.  Oh no! it can’t be, or she would have said so.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” said Aunt Henrietta, mysteriously.

“Besides, she dislikes him.  You know, Henrietta, that when he called here last week, and she happened to be with us, she put on her bonnet and went home immediately, without seeing him!”