Mrs. McDermott had reached Pincote, and she did not fail to let every one know it. As the Squire had predicted, the moment she had taken off her waterproof, and changed her boots, she marched straight into the library, and asked for her money. It was with a feeling of profound satisfaction that her brother unlocked his bureau, and handed her a roll of notes representing five thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds. She counted the notes over twice, slowly and carefully.

"What are the seven hundred and fifty pounds for?" she asked.

"Interest for three years at five per cent. per annum."

"I thought you would have got me seven per cent. at the least," she said ungraciously. "My man of business tells me that seven is quite a common thing nowadays. He says that he can get me nine or ten per cent. on real property, without any difficulty."

"I should advise you to be careful what you are about," said the Squire, gravely. "Big profits, big risks; little profits, little risks."

"I know perfectly well what I\'m doing," said Mrs. McDermott, with a toss of her antiquated curls. "It\'s you slow, sleepy, country folks, who crawl behind the times, and miss half the golden chances that come to people who keep their eyes wide open."

The Squire shook his head, but said no more. He groaned in spirit when he thought what his "golden chance" had done for him.

"Let her buy her experience as I\'ve bought mine," he said to himself. "From a girl she was always pig-headed: let her pay for it."

"Have you any idea how long your aunt is likely to stay?" he asked Jane, a day or two later.

"No idea whatever, papa. If the quantity of her luggage is anything to go by, I should say that her stay is likely to be a long one."

"I hope not, with all my heart," sighed the Squire.

Mrs. McDermott, in truth, was not a lady who ever troubled herself to make her presence agreeable to those with whom she might be staying. Consideration for the comfort of others was a thought that never entered her mind. From the day of her arrival at Pincote she began to interfere with the existing arrangements of the house; finding fault with everything: changing this, altering the other, and evidently determined to have her own way in all. The first thing she did was to find fault with her bedroom, although it was one of the pleasantest apartments in the house, and had been especially arranged by Jane herself with a view to her aunt\'s comfort. But it was not the best bedroom--the state bedroom, therefore Mrs. McDermott would have none of it. Into the state bedroom, a gloomy apartment fronting the north, which was never used above once or twice in half a dozen years, she migrated at once with all her belongings. Her next act, she being without a maid of her own at the time, was to induct one of the Pincote servants into that office, taking her altogether from her proper duties, and not permitting her to do a stroke of work for any one but herself. Then she talked her brother into allowing the dinner hour to be altered from six to half-past seven; so that, as the Squire grumbled to himself, the cloth was hardly removed before it was time to go to bed. Then the Squire must never appear at dinner without a dress coat, and a white tie--articles which, or late years, he had been tacitly allowed to dispense with when dining en famille. A white cravat especially was to him an abomination. He never could tie the knot properly, and after crumpling three or four, and throwing them across the room in a rage, Jane\'s services would generally have to be called into requisition as a last resource.

One other infliction there was which the Squire found it very difficult to bear patiently. After dinner, when there was no particular company at Pincote, it was an understood thing that the Squire should have the dining-room to himself for half an hour, in order that he might enjoy the post-prandial snooze which long custom had made almost a necessity with him. But this was an arrangement that failed to meet with the approbation of Mrs. McDermott. She insisted that the Squire should either accompany the ladies, or, otherwise, she herself would keep him company in the dining-room; and woe be to him if he dared so much as close an eye for five seconds! It was "Where are your manners, sir? I\'m thoroughly ashamed of you;" or else, "Falling asleep, sir, in the presence of a lady? a clodhopper could do no more than that!" till the Squire felt as if his life were being slowly tormented out of him.

Nor did Jane fail to come in for a share of her aunt\'s strictures. Mrs. McDermott evidently looked upon her as little more than a child. Firstly, her hair was not arranged in accordance with her aunt\'s ideas of propriety in such matters, which, truth to say, belonged to a somewhat antiquated school. Then the girl was altogether too bright and sunny-looking, with her bows of ribbon and bits of lace showing daintily here and there. And she was too forward in introducing topics of conversation at meal-times, instead of allowing the introduction of appropriate themes to come from her elders and her betters. Then Jane was addicted to the heinous offence of laughing too heartily, and too often. Altogether her aunt saw in her much that stood in need of reformation. Jane bore everything with a sort of good-humoured indifference. "The time to speak is not come yet. I will see how much further she will go," she said to herself. But when the cook came to her one morning and said: "If you please, miss, Mrs. Dermott says that for the future I am to take my dinner orders from her," then Jane thought that the time to speak was drawing very near indeed.

"Do as Mrs. McDermott tells you," she said quietly to the astonished cook.

"Well, I never! I thought that the mistress had more spirit than that," said the woman as she went back to her duties in the kitchen.

Next day brought the coachman. "Beg pardon, miss," he said, with a touch of his hair; "but Mrs. McDermott have given orders that the brougham and gray mare is to be ready for her every afternoon at three o\'clock to the minute. I am to take the order, miss, I suppose?"

"Quite right, John, till I give you orders to the contrary."

Next came the gardener. "Very sorry, miss, but I shall have to give notice--I shall really."

"Why, what\'s amiss now, Gibson?"

"It\'s all Mrs. McDermott, miss; begging your pardon for saying so. Why will she pretend to understand gardening better than me that has been at it, man and boy, for fifty year? Why will she come finding fault with this, that, and the other, in a way that neither the Squire nor you, miss, ever thinks of doing? And she not only finds fault, but gives orders, ridiculous orders, about things she knows nothing of. I can\'t stand it, miss, I really can\'t."

"Mrs. McDermott will give you no more orders, Gibson, after to-day. You can go back to your work with an easy mind."

Jane waited till next morning, and then having ascertained that her aunt had again given orders to the cook respecting dinner, she walked straight into the breakfast-room where she knew that she should find Mrs. McDermott alone, and busy with her correspondence--for she was a great letter writer at that hour of the morning.

"What a noisy girl you are," she said crossly, as her niece drew up a chair and sat down beside her. "I was just writing a few lines to dear Lady Clark when you came in in your usual brusque way and put all my ideas to flight."

"They must be poor, timid, little ideas, aunt, to be so easily frightened away," said Jane.

"Jane, there has been a flippant tone about you for the last day or two that I don\'t at all approve of. Flippancy in young people is easily acquired, but difficult to get rid of. The sooner you get rid of yours the better I shall be pleased."

Jane rose from her chair and swept Mrs. McDermott a stately curtsey. "Is it not almost time, aunt," she said quietly, "that you gave up treating me, and talking to me, as if I were a child?"

"If you are no longer a child in years, you are still very childish in many of your ways."

"You are quite epigrammatic this morning, aunt."

"Don\'t be impertinent, young lady."

"I have no intention of being impertinent. But I have come to see you about the order for dinner which you gave the cook half an hour ago."

"What about that?" asked Mrs. McDermott snappishly. "In what way does it concern you?"

"It concerns me very materially indeed," answered Jane. "You have ordered several things for dinner that papa does not care about; some, in fact, that he never eats. Fried soles, for instance, and veal cutlets--articles he never touches. So I have told the cook to supplement your order with some turbot and a boiled fowl à la marquise. I have also told her that for the future she will receive from me every evening the menu for next day. Should my list contain nothing that you care about, the cook has orders to obtain specially for you any articles that you may wish to have."

"Upon my word! what next?" was all that Mrs. McDermott could gasp out at the moment, so overcome was she with rage and surprise.

"This next," said Jane. "From to-day the dinner hour will be altered back to six o\'clock. Half-past seven suits neither papa nor me. Should the latter hour be a necessity with you, you can always have your dinner served at that time in your own room. But papa and I will dine at six."

"I shall talk to your papa about this, and ascertain from his own lips whether I am to be dictated to and insulted by a chit like you."

"That is just what I must forbid you to do," said Jane. "Papa\'s health has not been what it ought to be for a long time past.

"Only a few weeks ago he had a slight stroke. Happily he soon recovered from it, but Dr. Davidson says that all exciting topics must be kept carefully from him. You know how little things w............