d._--, sleeping, the other-- No.

Miss Gascoigne never slept.

Her sharp, _"Flaw-seeking eyes, like needles' points,"_ were always open, and more especially when the circle consisted, as now, of her brother-in-law, his children, and his new wife.

Doubtless she considered watchfulness her duty.

Indeed, as she explained over and over again to Aunt Maria, the principal reason which made her consent still to remain at the Lodge, instead of returning to her own pretty cottage at Avonside, was to overlook and guard the interests of "those poor motherless children." Now it happened, unfortunately for Miss Gascoigne, that if Christian had one bright spot in the future of her married life to which she had looked forward earnestly, longingly, it was those children--how she would take care of them; fill up her weary days with them; love them, and be loved by them; in short, find in them the full satisfaction of her motherly heart--that heart in which she then thought there was no instincts or emotions left except the motherly.