They sat, one on either side the fire, in the long unbroken silence of people who are so used to one another that they feel no necessity for talking, until Miss Gascoigne spoke first, as she always did.

“I wonder what Dr. Grey meant by desiring the children to be kept out of their beds till his return.  As if I should allow it!  And to order a tea-dinner!  No wonder Barker looked astonished!  He never knew my poor sister have anything but a proper dinner, at the proper hour; but it’s just that young woman’s doing.  In her position, of course she always dined at one o’clock.”

“Very likely,” said Miss Grey, assentingly.  Dissent she never did, in any thing, from any body, least of all from Miss Gascoigne.

That lady fidgeted again, poked the fire, regarded herself in the mirror, and settled her cap—­no, her head-dress, for Miss Grey always insisted that “dear Henrietta” was too young to wear caps, and admired fervently the still black—­too black hair, the mystery of which was only known to Henrietta herself.

“What o’clock is it? half-past nine, I declare.  Most annoying—­most impertinent—­to keep us waiting for our tea in this way.  Your brother never did it before.”

“I hope there is no accident,” said Miss Grey, looking up alarmed.  “The snow might be dangerous on the railway.”

“Maria, if you had any sense—­but I think you have less and less every day—­you would remember that they are not coming by rail at all—­of course not.  On the very first day of term, when Dr. Grey would meet so many people he knew to have to introduce his wife!  Why, everybody would have laughed at him; and no wonder.  Verily, there’s no fool like an old fool.”

“Henrietta!” pitifully appealed the sister, “you know dear Arnold is not a fool.  He never did a foolish thing in his life, except, perhaps, in making this unfortunate marriage.  And she may improve.  Any body ought to improve who had the advantage of living constantly with dear Arnold.”

Miss Gascoigne, always on the watch for affronts, turning sharply round, but there was not a shadow of satire in her friend’s simplicity.  “My dear Maria, you are the greatest—­”

But what Miss Grey was remained among the few bitter speeches that Miss Gascoigne left unsaid, for at that moment the heavy oak door was thrown wide open, and Barker, the butler (time-honored institution of Saint Bede’s, who thought himself one of its strongest pillars of support), repeated, in his sonorous voice,

“The master and Mrs. Grey.”

Thus announced—­suddenly and formally, like a stranger, in her own house—­Christian came home.