an experiment, only it answered, as many of Mr. Gray’s deeds of daring did.  It was curious how he was growing to be a kind of autocrat in the village; and how unconscious he was of it.  He was as shy and awkward and nervous as ever in any affair that was not of some moral consequence to him.  But as soon as he was convinced that a thing was right, he “shut his eyes and ran and butted at it like a ram,” as Captain James once expressed it, in talking over something Mr. Gray had done.  People in the village said, “they never knew what the parson would be at next;” or they might have said, “where his reverence would next turn up.”  For I have heard of his marching right into the middle of a set of poachers, gathered together for some desperate midnight enterprise, or walking into a public-house that lay just beyond the bounds of my lady’s estate, and in that extra-parochial piece of ground I named long ago, and which was considered the rendezvous of all the ne’er-do-weel characters for miles round, and where a parson and a constable were held in much the same kind of esteem as unwelcome visitors.  And yet Mr. Gray had his long fits of depression, in which he felt as if he were doing nothing, making no way in his work, useless and unprofitable, and better out of the world than in it.  In comparison with the work he had set himself to do, what he did seemed to be nothing.  I suppose it was constitutional, those attacks of lowness of spirits which he had about this time; perhaps a part of the nervousness which made him always so awkward when he came to the Hall.  Even Mrs. Medlicott, who almost worshipped the ground he trod on, as the saying is, owned that Mr. Gray never entered one of my lady’s rooms without knocking down something, and too often breaking it.  He would much sooner have faced a desperate poacher than a young lady any day.  At least so we thought.

I do not know how it was that it came to pass that my lady became reconciled to Miss Galindo about this time.  Whether it was that her ladyship was weary of the unspoken coolness with her old friend; or that the specimens of delicate sewing and fine spinning at the school had mollified her towards Miss Bessy; but I was surprised to learn one day that Miss Galindo and her young friend were coming that very evening to tea at the Hall.  This information was given me by Mrs. Medlicott, as a message from my lady, who further went on to desire that certain little preparations should be made in her own private sitting-room, in which the greater part of my days were spent.  From the nature of these preparations, I became quite aware that my lady intended to do honour to her expected visitors.  Indeed, Lady Ludlow never forgave by halves, as I have known some people do.  Whoever was coming as a visitor to my lady, peeress, or poor nameless girl, there was a certain amount of preparation required in order to do them fitting honour.  I do not mean to say that the preparation was of the