The little matter that Mr. Irwine had to attend to took him up the old stone staircase (part of the house was very old) and made him pause before a door at which he knocked gently.  “Come in,” said a woman’s voice, and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and curtains that Miss Kate, the thin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside, would not have had light enough for any other sort of work than the knitting which lay on the little table near her.  But at present she was doing what required only the dimmest light—­sponging the aching head that lay on the pillow with fresh vinegar.  It was a small face, that of the poor sufferer; perhaps it had once been pretty, but now it was worn and sallow.  Miss Kate came towards her brother and whispered, “Don’t speak to her; she can’t bear to be spoken to to-day.”  Anne’s eyes were closed, and her brow contracted as if from intense pain.  Mr. Irwine went to the bedside and took up one of the delicate hands and kissed it, a slight pressure from the small fingers told him that it was worth-while to have come upstairs for the sake of doing that.  He lingered a moment, looking at her, and then turned away and left the room, treading very gently—­he had taken off his boots and put on slippers before he came upstairs.  Whoever remembers how many things he has declined to do even for himself, rather than have the trouble of putting on or taking off his boots, will not think this last detail insignificant.

And Mr. Irwine’s sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women!  It was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Irwine should have had such commonplace daughters.  That fine old lady herself was worth driving ten miles to see, any day; her beauty, her well-preserved faculties, and her old-fashioned dignity made her a graceful subject for conversation in turn with the King’s health, the sweet new patterns in cotton dresses, the news from Egypt, and Lord Dacey’s lawsuit, which was fretting poor Lady Dacey to death.  But no one ever thought of mentioning the Miss Irwines, except the poor people in Broxton village, who regarded them as deep in the science of medicine, and spoke of them vaguely as “the gentlefolks.”  If any one had asked old Job Dummilow who gave him his flannel jacket, he would have answered, “the gentlefolks, last winter”; and widow Steene dwelt much on the virtues of the “stuff” the gentlefolks gave her for her cough.  Under this name too, they were used with great effect as a means of taming refractory children, so that at the sight of poor Miss Anne’s sallow face, several small urchins had a terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst misdemeanours, and knew the precise number of stones with which they had intended to hit Farmer Britton’s ducks.  But for all who saw them through a less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous existences—­inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without adequate