Before a reply could be given, the bedroom door opened with fracas, and aunt Sylvia suddenly appeared. She was totally different in appearance to her sister. Dorcas was plump, good-tempered, meek-looking, about forty-five years of age. Sylvia was some five years her senior; a little, thin, sharp-faced woman—one whose very dress looked meagre; not the richest brocade could appear rich on so shapeless an anatomy; it would trail on the ground, limp, and disheartened from any attempt to look well. She had the strangest eyes in the world—a dark, dingy, chestnut brown, of which the pupil was certainly not larger than a pin's head; thin nose, thin lips, thin hair, hands, and voice, completed aunt Sylvia—with the addition of the very thinnest mind in the world. It was like a screw-press; put any thing bulky within it, it was compressed instanter to a mummy, and thence doled out in such small particles, that it was inevitably lost in the general mass of which aunt Sylvia was formed.
"I declare, Minnie," she whistled forth in her shrilly tone, "you would provoke a saint; here have I been calling you at the top of my voice this hour, and you must have heard me! Really, Dorcas, it is too bad; you always encourage the child—you, too, must have heard me."
"I have only been here a few moments," placidly answered her sister.
"Then your conversation must have been most engrossing, for such deafness to have fallen upon you!" and she looked suspiciously from one to the other.
"We were speaking of——"
Before Minnie could complete her sentence, her door opened a third time, and admitted uncle Juvenal. We will only say of him, that he was the bond of union between the two sisters; not stout, not thin, not cross, not quiet; older by three years than Dorcas, younger by two than Sylvia, being forty-eight; prim, snuff-coloured, and contented, having but one desire in the world—the one common to the three, to see Minnie a wife. A warm discussion ensued between him and Sylvia, relative to some words which had passed between the squire and doctor, fostered by their mutual hopes of gaining Minnie, which hope was encouraged—nay, the niece promised to each—by his patron and patroness. Now, Juvenal came to seek the cause, and chide her propensity for loneliness; and while he and Sylvia were warmly debating their disputed points, Dorcas and Minnie crept out of the room, and the former gained the day this time, for she and her niece, this latter with only her garden hat on, left the hall by a side door, accompanied by Mr. Skaife, who had been quietly waiting—it might have been by Dorcas's cognizance—in a shrubbery through which they passed on a visit of benevolence. Juvenal and Sylvia, finding the birds escaped, descended to the garden, when they discovered that the same thing had occurred respecting the squire and lawyer; both had disappeared. So the brother and sister sat down to talk it quietly over, which terminated as all previous talkings on the same subject had done before—by their completely disagreeing in their respective views, and consequently falling out; in other words, having a violent quarrel. And poor little Minnie—the subject of all these commotions—was quietly walking towards the village with her aunt Dorcas, and her selection of a suitor, Mr. Skaife, who, to do him justice, was the most sincere lover of the three; he cared but little whether Minnie were rich or poor, provided she could be brought by any means to look smilingly upon him. He was only a poor curate, 'twas true; but then some day he hoped to be, perhaps, a bishop—Who might say? And in either or any case, he would have chosen her to share all with him. Perhaps she had been correct in saying he did not possess the sacred fire necessary for his calling; but that fault lay to the account of his parents, who had possibly brought him up to the church as a mere profession, when it should be a voluntary choice. If, as she supposed, he did not possess the fire necessary for martyrdom, if summoned to that glory, he certainly did the fire of love for the fair girl beside him; and while she wished he were any thing but a lover, both for the sake of a certain pleasure she felt in his company, and for her aunt's sake, he was wondering whether he ever should win her?—when?—and how?—and in this mood they walked on. Many long years before our tale commenced, a certain country gentleman named Formby and his wife were the residents at Gatestone Hall, the fine old-fashioned place we have just quitted; they were homely and primitive, and withal majestic as the oak-panelled walls of the hospitable home which gave a welcome to many a guest in that portion of her Majesty's domains called Yorkshire, where the "canniness" of its inhabitants consists most in the almost unparalleled method they possess, of winning the way to the heart by kindness and genuine homely hospitality, of which Mr. and Mrs. Formby were well-chosen representatives. They had five children—four daughters and one son. They never troubled themselves as to whether these would marry—that was an affair of nature, and nature was handmaiden at Gatestone Hall. However, art—or some adverse god or goddess—crept in, and marred her course. Of five, only two obeyed her law. Juliana, the eldest, a fine dashing girl, attracted the attention of the Earl of Ripley at a race ball; and, six weeks afterwards, became his Countess. The youngest of all, Baby, as they called her (Jenny was her name, to the amazement of her family, which appeared impressed with the idea, that baby she was, and ever would remain), married, at seventeen, a poor half-pay officer for love; and true love it was. The little god likes poverty best, after all; he generally nestles there, though the song says otherwise. The only change this marriage made at the Hall was, the addition of another inmate to its cheerful circle. Lieutenant Dalzell became located there for seven months—very short ones they were, too—with his sweet, loving wife; and there, poor fellow! he died of an old wound won in India, which shattered an arm, and obliged him to quit the service. Poor Baby cried like one; nothing could console her, not even the birth of Minnie some months afterwards: so she cried herself into the pretty green churchyard, beneath a yew-tree, beside Dalzell; for, poor girl!—almost a child still when he died—begged so earnestly that they wouldn't shut up her William in the cold stone family vault, but put him where the sun might shine upon him, and the green grass grow, that he had a grave under the bright canopy of heaven, and there, beside him, Baby lay; and only that day, and the one of his death, did the old hall clock cease its rounds by her desire. Then Mr. Formby soon followed, and his wife, leaving three unmarried children, and these three we have seen as bachelor and spinsters still. Whatever the two sisters may have thought of matrimony, assuredly Juvenal had given it no part of his dreams by day or night. Their spinsterhood might have been involuntary of their inclinations, but there was no law to prevent his asking; and, had he done so, assuredly he might have had some one at all events, for, though not a rich man, he was Lord of Gatestone, which would only pass away from the grasp of himself or heirs should he die childless, of which there seemed now every chance. Caps of every possible colour, like fly-traps, were set to catch him, by all the spinsters and widows of the neighbourhood; carriages of every description drove up to the Hall, with inmates perfectly free, able, and willing; but when they left, the only impression behind them was of their carriage-wheels on the gravelled drive. Now all these attacks had become considerably diminished, as time had shown their inefficacy. Strange to say, though Juvenal had evinced no desire to marry on his own part, all his energies (they were not legion) were called into play to effect an union for his much-loved niece; and still stranger, that the three, loving her as they did love her, should have one only thought in common, and be all equally bent on the same scheme, which might probably separate her from them for ever. But it is the course of a Christopher Columbian current in our blood, to be always desirous of exploring some unknown territory. Such was matrimonial ground to them, and they felt curious to watch its effect upon others, personal experience being denied, or not desired by themselves. Minnie was sadly perplexed among them;—they forced her to think of marriage, when she otherwise would have been much more innocently employed; and, unfortunately for them, she had not the slightest idea of condensing all her thoughts on any one of those whom they had chosen. The lawyer pressed her hand—the squire conferred the same honour on her toe, as she stepped on his hand to mount her horse; and the most sincere, as it is ever the case, stood half awkwardly aloof, and sighed as he whispered to the winds, which blew it heaven knows where—"Pretty Minnie Dalzell! I shall never win her; she's too fair for a poor curate's home!"
Pretty she certainly was, and fair—fair as the brightest lily tinged by a sunbeam dancing across, but not staining, its purity. Such was the tint that flew over her cheek, every moment new and changing; the prettiest lip, such a short upper one that the mouth scarcely closed upon teeth of shining whiteness, like a mother-of-pearl shell wet from the spray, so fresh they looked. Her eyes were of dark violet, with lashes and brows darker than the hair, the former so long and thick they were like a setting round a gem; beautiful eyes, which you lost yourself in looking into, wondering whence came the pure, clear light, which lent them so much chaste fire—yet they were full of soul too. In the forehead, the blue veins wandered like silvery streams through a daisied meadow, giving life to all;—there was the bloom, grace, and poetry of the rarest and brightest bouquet of flowers ever collected together, in that noble brow, and in the ever-changing expression of her sweet face; and above all, her coronet of magnificent hair clustered in rare brightness;—it was not golden, yet it shone like it; nor flaxen—it had too much expression in it for that. It was such hair as only a creature like Minnie could have. It seemed as if an angel had spun it in the sun, and waved it by moonlight. 'Twas fair, chaste-looking hair, fit for dew spirit's gems to hang upon. You took it in your hand, and it was flossy as unspun silk, and this unbound fell to Minnie's heel, and yet so pliant and soft, that her little hand could bind the mass round the beautiful head with ease and grace. She was not tall, but about middle height, perhaps a trifle more; slight, a mere fairy in figure, and the springing foot scorned the earth like a flying gazelle. Talk of her marrying a mere mortal—she should have lived when angels are said to have loved the sons of men. The curate thought of this; so no wonder he sighed, even encouraged as he was by——Aunt Dorcas.
CHAPTER II.
It was in the month of June, the early part, when May-flowers still bloom, and the blossoming trees are not yet in full matronly beauty, but in their bridal robes, with wreaths of flowers, like robes of dazzling whiteness, that Minnie and her two companions walked on (for she loved one and liked the other), her heart giving the rein to all her wild Arab-colt thoughts of nobility and liberty. She had nothing to conceal; all was pure and beautiful in her mind, sunny and hopeful. They were going to visit one of Aunt Dorcas's pensioners, and on Minnie's pretty arm hung a basket of charitable gifts, truly such, for they were appropriate to the wants of those for whom they were destined. Gifts of thought and consideration, not merely donations from a full purse or plentiful larder. On they journeyed, until a lane appeared before them; the girl turned down it.