“And a very rude thing, too, on her part.  Any visitors whom I choose to invite to my house—­”

“But he invited himself.”

“No matter, he came, and I certainly had no reason to turn him out.  I consider Dr. Grey’s objections to him perfectly ridiculous.  Why, one meets the young man every where, in the very best society, and his manners are charming.  But that is not the question.  The question is just this:  Was he, or was he not, an acquaintance of Mrs. Grey’s before her marriage? and if he were, why did she not say so?”

“Perhaps she did.”

“Not to me; when he called at the Lodge and I introduced them, they bowed as if they were just ordinary strangers.  Now that was a rather odd thing, and a very disrespectful thing to myself, not to tell me they had met before, I certainly have a right to be displeased.  Don’t you feel it so, Maria?”

Whether she did or not, Maria only answered with her usual deprecatory smile.

“There is another curious circumstance, now I recall it.  Sir Edwin showed great surprise, which, indeed, I could scarcely wonder at, when I told him—­(I forget how it happened, but I know I was somehow obliged to tell him)—­who it was your brother had married—­Miss Oakley, the organist’s daughter.”

“Don’t you think,” said Aunt Maria, with a sudden sparkle of intelligence, “it might have been her father he was acquainted with?  Sir Edwin is so very musical himself that it is not unlikely he should seek the company of musicians.  As for Christian “—­simple as she was, Aunt Maria had not lived fifty years in the world, and twenty with Miss Gascoigne, without some small acuteness—­“I can see, of course, how very bad it would have been for poor Christian to have any acquaintance among young gownsmen, and especially with a person like Sir Edwin Uniacke.”

“He is no worse than his neighbors, and I beg you will make no remarks upon him,” said Miss Gascoigne, with dignity.  “As to Mrs. Grey—­”

“Perhaps,” again suggested Aunt Maria, appealingly, “perhaps it isn’t true.  People do say such untrue things.  Mrs. Brereton may have imagined it all.”

“It was no imagination.  Haven’t I told you that Miss Bennett gave the whole story, with full particulars, exactly as she had learned it lately from the servant at the farm where Mr. Oakley and his daughter once lodged and where Mr. Uniacke used to come regularly?  Not one day did he miss during a whole month.  Now, Maria, I should be sorry to think ill of her for your brother’s sake but you must allow, when a young person in her station receives constant visits from young gentlemen—­gentlemen so much above her as Sir Edwin is—­it looks very like—­”

“Oh, Henrietta,” cried Miss Grey, the womanly feeling within her forcing its way, even through her placid non-resistance, “do stop! you surely don’t consider what you are saying?”

“I am not in the habit of speaking without consideration, and I am, I assure you, perfectly aware of what I am saying.  I say again, that such conduct was not creditable to Miss Oakley.  Of course, one could not expect from a person like her the same decorum that was natural to you and me in our girlhood.  I do not believe you and William ever so much as looked at one another before you were engaged.”