Chapter Ten.

Chapter Ten.At the Vicarage.The second event which about this time made a little break in the monotony of the lives at Pinnerton Lodge came out of the first; for it was the result of much consideration on Lady Hebe’s part as to what she could do to enliven things for these two girls, who seemed in a sense to have been thrown across her path.She knew that it was useless to appeal to Lady Marth, her guardian’s wife—a woman who had deliberately narrowed her life and her sympathies by restricting all her interests to a small and very exclusive clique, which was the more to be regretted as she was naturally intelligent and quick of discernment, without the excuse of poor Lady Harriot Dunstan’s intense native stupidity. But Hebe managed to have a good talk with Mrs Selwyn—“Aunt Grace”—the very morning after the Derwents’ visit to Alderwood, and Aunt Grace’s own interest in the new-comers being keen, she was delighted to find Hebe’s enlisted on their behalf.“I am very sorry I am leaving so immediately,” said Mrs Selwyn. “I might have been of a little use to them, even though very little. You see, no one is altogether to blame in a case like this. Life is short, and there are only so many hours in each day, and no one can be in two places at once, or full of conflicting interests at the same time. People who are half their lives in London, in the thick of the things of the day, all have too much upon them; itisdifficult to get to know much of those who are quite out of it. And the Derwents are only half English, too.”“Then do you think it a mistake for them to have come to live here?” said Hebe.“I scarcely know; I can’t judge. They have put themselves in adifficultposition, but there may have been excellent reasons for their leaving France. If they are very high-minded, superior women, they may be happy, and make interests for themselves, and not fret about things they cannot have. Certainly they—the mother, I should say—is far too refined to struggle or strain after society.”“And the elder one is, I do believe, an extraordinarily high-minded girl,” said Hebe, with a sort of enthusiasm. “Still, it isn’t fair upon her to be shut out from things; and the little one, though she is as tall as I”—with a smile—“says frankly that she finds it woefully dull.”“And she is only sixteen,” said Mrs Selwyn; “not out, and with French ideas about young girls. Dear me, it must be very dull indeed for a girl brought up on those lines to think it so.”“She is not the very least French in herself,” said Hebe. “Just a touch of something out of the common in her tone and manners, perhaps. But I never met a more thoroughly English girl in feeling. Yes, indeed. What will she think when sheisgrown up?”“Let us hope that things may improve for them a little, before then,” said Mrs Selwyn.Then the two—the old woman and the young—put their heads together as to what theycoulddo; the result being that, three or four days after the drive to Alderwood, a note was brought to Blanche one morning, inviting her and her sister to afternoon tea at the vicarage.“I expect one or two young friends living in the neighbourhood,” wrote Mrs Harrowby, the vicaress, “whom you may like to meet, and who, on their side, have some hopes of getting you to help in their little local charities.”“Humph,” said Stasy, when Blanche read this aloud; “I’ve no vocation for that sort of thing. I think you had better go without me.”“No, I certainly won’t,” said her sister, without much misgiving. For she saw that, notwithstanding Stasy’s ungraciousness, she was secretly pleased at even this mild prospect of a little variety.Mrs Harrowby’s attentions hitherto—though her good offices had been bespoken for the Derwents by her brother at Blissmore—had been less friendly, and more, so to say, professional. She was a very busy woman, almost too scrupulous in her determination to be “the same to everybody,” to show no difference between her bearing towards the retired tradespeople of Pinnerton Green, and towards Lady Marth, or other county dignitaries; the result being, that no attention she ever paid to any one was considered much of a compliment. But she was well-born and well-bred, though not specially endowed with tact.And she was honestly pleased when Lady Hebe appealed to her to suggestsomethingthat might help to enliven the sisters at Pinnerton Lodge.“Yes,” she agreed, “I have thought it must be very dull for them. And yet I could not exactly take it upon me to suggest their making friends with their neighbours here. Something in their manner has caused a slight prejudice against them. None of the families here have called.”“What neighbours or families are you talking of, Mrs Harrowby?” said Hebe quickly. She knew the vicar’s wife very well—knew, too, her peculiar way of looking at social things, and was not in the very least in awe of her. “Lady Harriot has called, though—”“Of course, I was not speaking of neighbours of that kind,” replied Mrs Harrowby, interrupting her. “I meant the Wandles at Pinnerton Villa, and the Bracys: I am sure Adela Bracy is as nice a girl as one could wish to see, and Florence Wandle is good-nature itself. It is much wiser, as well as more Christian, to throw aside those ridiculous ideas of class prejudice, and make the best of the people you live among.”“Then why should not all the county people call upon the Derwents, as well as the Wandles and Bracys?” said Hebe, with a very innocent air.Mrs Harrowby coloured a little.“I don’t know. I don’t see why you should blame them if they don’t, as you evidently don’t blame the Derwents for standing off from the Green people. But, the fact of the matter is, they would have nothing in common with the Derwents. You know yourself, Hebe, Lady Marthcouldn’tfind anything to talk to Mrs Derwent about—now, could she?”“She could if she chose,” said Hebe; “but I don’t want to talk about Josephine”—she always called her guardian’s wife, who was still a comparatively young woman, by her first name—“she and I don’t agree on several points, but she is very good to me. I am not going to urge her calling on Mrs Derwent, for she wouldn’t, if I did. And I don’t think the Derwents could possibly like the only side of herself she would show them. But putting her aside, I certainly don’t see that theDerwentswould have ‘anything in common’ with the Wandles and people like that, if you take that ground.”“Then theyshouldhave,” said Mrs Harrowby, who was apt to take refuge in didactic utterances, when she found herself driven into a corner.Hebe laughed.“We have not come to the point at all, though we have been talking all this time,” she said. “What I was thinking of was some plan for enlivening the Derwent girls a little.At present,” and she blushed slightly, “I can do nothing, but supposing we ask them to help us with our girls’ guild? You do want to improve it, don’t you? The last meetings have been so deadly dull. And we were speaking of some new things—cooking lessons, was it?”“Yes, we spoke of that, but I think we must wait till one of the professional cooking ladies comes round. We were speaking of millinery lessons—the girls do make such vulgar guys of themselves.”“That would be nice,” said Hebe. “I daresay Miss Derwent could help us. And we must have some treats for the girls when the weather is quite warm enough. Let us have a meeting, and talk it all over. You can ask Miss Wandle and Miss Bracy, and I will get Norman’s sister to come, though it is rather beyond their part of the country. For she might get leave to invite the guild to Crossburn. Yes, do let us have a nice afternoon-tea meetinghere, and talk it over comfortably.”Mrs Harrowby consented. There were not many people who could refuse Hebe anything she had set her heart upon. Besides, the vicars wife had no objection to the proposal. She was kind-hearted, if a trifle dictatorial, and not without a pleasant strain of humour, as well as a fair amount of sympathy.So, on the appointed afternoon, Blanche and Stasy made their way to the vicarage.“How pretty you look, Blanchie!” said Stasy, with a gush of sisterly enthusiasm. “I do think you are getting prettier and prettier. England suits you, I suppose,” with a little sigh.Blanche laughed.“Suits my looks, I suppose you mean?” she said lightly. Stasy’s admiration amused, but did not much impress her. Indeed she was not of the nature to be much impressed by any admiration. She knew she was “pretty,” as she called it to herself, but the subject never dwelt in her thoughts. And she was entirely without vanity. Many a girl of far less beauty, of no beauty at all, gives a hundred times more consideration to the question of outward appearance than would have been possible under any circumstances for Blanche Derwent.There seemed to be quite a number of people in the vicarage drawing-room when they entered it. Stasy—who, to tell the truth, was feeling a trifle shy, though wild horses would not have drawn such a confession from her—had insisted on coming some minutes later than the hour at which they had been invited.“I don’t want to seem so very eager about it,” she said to Blanche. “And if we go early, we are sure to be set down to talk to some of the Green people. It would be horrid.”To some extent, she was caught in her own trap. A chair was offered her between two girls, neither of whom she had seen before, and who, she immediately decided, must belong to the neighbours she certainly had no reason to feel friendliness towards. For, whatever had been the motive, and though very possibly their staying away was from the social point of view more gratifying than their calling would have been, no kindliness of any kind had been shown or attempted by the good folk of Pinnerton Green to the little family who had come as strangers among them.Stasy glanced cautiously at the girls beside her. One was plain, not to say ugly, and dressed with almost exaggerated simplicity. Her features were heavy and ill-assorted; her nose was large, and nevertheless seemed too short for the curious length of her face; her eyes—no, she was not looking Stasy’s way—her eyes could not be pronounced upon.“She is really ugly,” thought Stasy; “I haven’t seen any English girl as ugly as she is. And how very plainly she is dressed: I wonder if it is because she knows she is ugly. It cannot be that she’s poor: all these common people here are rich. Her dress is only”—Stasy gave another covert glance at the cloth skirt touching her own—“only—no, it’s good of its kind, though so plainly made, and yet—”Yes, there was a “yet,” very decidedly, both as to dress, which was the very best of its kind, and, when the girl slowly turned to Stasy with some trivial remark, as to looks. For her eyes were beautiful, quite beautiful, with the touch of pathos in them which one sometimes sees in eyes which are the only redeeming feature of an undeniably plain face.“Have a little indulgence for me—I cannot help myself,” such eyes seem to say, and Stasy, sensitive as quicksilver, responded at once to the unspoken appeal.“Thank you,” she said gently, “I have plenty of room—no, I don’t mind being near the window,” and then she salved over to herself her suavity to “one of those Wandle or Bracy girls,” by reflecting that Blanche had said it would be very wrong indeed to show anything but perfect courtesy and kindliness at a party especially arranged for a charitable object, though a slight misgiving came over her when the owner of the beautiful eyes spoke again in an evidently less conventional and more friendly tone.“That was your sister who came in with you, was it not? I am so glad to see her more distinctly. She is so—so very lovely.”Stasy, gratified though she felt on one side, stiffened slightly. Miss Wandle should not comment upon Blanche’s appearance, however favourably.“Yes,” she said, “every one thinks so.Ido, I can’t deny.”Then she turned to her neighbour on the right. She was a pretty girl, with wavy brown hair, and a charming rosebud of a face. But her dress, though much more studied than the austere but perfectly fitting tweed, jarred at once on Stasy’s correct instincts. So did her voice, when in reply to the inquiry as to whether any guild business had yet been transacted, she said:“Oh no, we always have tea first. Mrs Harrowby says it makes us feel more at”—was there or was there not a suspicion of the absence of the aspirate, instantaneously and almost obtrusively corrected?—“at—athome; not so shy about speaking out, you know.”“Oh indeed,” said Stasy.Then she turned again to the heavy face and the luminous eyes, in whose depths she now read a twinkle of fun.“I like you, whoever you are,” she thought. And as at that moment Hebe came up with outstretched hand and cordial “How do you do? You found your way the other day, I hope?” an irrepressible little burst of enthusiasm made its way through her caution.“Is she not charming? She is always so perfectly sweet and happy,” she said.“Yes indeed,” her neighbour replied, and the bright responsive smile on her face made one forget everything except the eyes. “She is—perfectlycharming. I like to see that she gives the same impression to strangers as to those who have known her long. I can remember her nearly all my life, and yet every time I see her there seems somethingnew. She is—I daresay you know?—she is going to be married to my brother Norman. Won’t it be delightful to have her for a sister?”And again the beautiful eyes gleamed with something brighter than their ordinary expression of appeal.Stasy gasped. Who, then, was this girl? For an instant, a wild, ridiculous idea rushed through her mind that Lady Hebe must be going to marry one of the Wandles or Bracys, so prepossessed was she with her first guess about her plain-featured neighbour. But she dismissed it at once, and she began to feel shocked at her own want of discernment.The colour mounted into her face as she replied to her companions question.“I didn’t know; at least,” hesitatingly, “I am not sure. I think I did hear something, but I can’t remember. I— Please don’t think me rude, but I don’t know your name.”“I am Rosy Milward. We live at Crossburn, the dearest old, old house in the world,” said the girl.“Oh!” said Stasy. “Yes, I have heard your name. It will be delightful to have Lady Hebe for your sister.”But her tone was slightly melancholy. She had been cherishing, half unconsciously perhaps, dreams of special friendship, romantic friendship, between Lady Hebe and herself (though she called it “us,” reluctant to leave out Blanche from anything so charming). And now her dreams seemed shattered. She—Hebe—was going to be married, and here was a sister-friend all ready made for her. It was much better never to expect to see or know any more of the future wife of Mr Norman Milward.Rosy was conscious of the underlying disappointment, though she could not have defined it.“I wish I could invite them to come to Crossburn,” she thought to herself. “I don’t like to see such a young girl so subdued and almost sad. But unless grandmamma would call, of course I can’t, and I’m afraid there is no use in trying for that.”The Milwards had no mother, and their father’s mother, who had to some extent brought them up, was old, and naturally disinclined to make new acquaintances without strong motives for doing so; somewhat narrow and exclusive she was, too, in her ideas, and in this a great contrast to the old friend, with whom, nevertheless, she had much in common—Mrs Selwyn.Just as Miss Milward was feeling about for some other topic of conversation which might interest her companion, Stasy bent towards her.“Would you mind telling me who the girl is on my other side—she can’t hear, she is speaking to some one else?”Rosy glanced across Stasy: she had forgotten for the moment who was sitting there.“Oh yes,” she said; “that is—let me see. I often confuse the two families: they are cousins. Oh yes; that is Miss Wandle—Florry Wandle, Mrs Harrowby calls her. She helps a good deal with the guild. She has a nice, pretty face, hasn’t she?”“Verypretty,” Stasy agreed, and she meant what she said, and something in Miss Milward’s tone gratified her. There was a tacit and tactful taking for granted that their little commentary on Miss Wandle was from the same point of view: there was no touch of surprise that Stasy did not already know the girl, or that the Pinnerton Green folk were not of the Derwents’ “world.”Then they went on to talk a little of the guild and its interests, till a summons to Miss Milward to help at the tea-table interrupted thetête-à-tête. But Stasy’s mercurial spirits had risen again, and they rose still higher, when, encouraged by an almost imperceptible signal from Lady Hebe, she ventured to leave her place, and, as one of the youngest present, volunteered her services in handing about bread and butter and cakes.And Blanche, meanwhile? On entering, she had at once been led over to the other end of the room, which was a long one, by Mrs Harrowby, and ensconsed in a corner beside Lady Hebe.“Now, I want to talk to you very seriously, Miss Derwent,” said Blanche’s “girl with the happy face.”“Mrs Harrowby and I are counting on your doing great things to help us. You see it is such a disadvantage in any little work of this kind for those who principally manage it to be so much away. And if youcouldtake interest in it, it would be such a good thing for the girls. For I suppose”—and she glanced up with a touch of apology—“I suppose you will not be going to London for the seasonthisyear, as you have come here so lately?”“No,” said Blanche simply, “we shall certainly stay here. I doubt if we shall ever go to London except for a day or two’s shopping: we have no friends there.”“It will be different, of course, when you have been longer in England,” said Hebe. “And,” she added with a smile, “when your sister comes out, I scarcely thinkshewould be satisfied with nothing more amusing than Pinnerton, however contentyouare.”Blanche coloured a little.“You think me better than I am,” she said. “I should enjoy—things—too, but if one can’t have them? But I think Ishouldmind for Stasy more than for myself. She is naturally more dependent on outside life than I. She does feel it very dull and lonely here, and I wish she had some companions.” Hebe looked and felt full of sympathy.“I hope your life here will brighten by degrees,” she said. “Don’t you think your sister would do something to help us, too? She seems so clever.”“Yes, she is very quick, and she can be very amusing,” said Blanche. “We should both be glad to do anything we can. But have you not a good many helpers already? And those other ladies—the residents here—theydon’t go away. Could not they take charge in your absence much better than a stranger like me?”She glanced across the room to where Miss Adela Bracy, a small, capable-looking, dark girl, was at the moment saying something in a low voice to the rosebud-faced Florry Wandle. Lady Hebe’s eyes followed hers.“They are very good, so far as they go,” she replied, “but they are not quite capable of taking the lead. And they have really as much to do as they can manage. It is some one to replace myself when I am away that I want to find. And I could explain it all to you so well, and get advice from you too, I have no doubt.”“I am very ignorant about such things,” said Blanche.“Yes, but you have a good head, and you”—here Hebe smiled and blushed a little—“well, you must know how I mean. It would be so different explaining things to you: you would see them from our point of view. These girls are very good-natured and nice, but I never feel sure that they perfectly understand.”And then she went on to tell Blanche further details about the little work she had inaugurated and carried on—so simply, and yet earnestly, that Blanche’s full interest was quickly won, and they went on talking eagerly till tea and interruption came, as Hebe had to help Mrs Harrowby with her hostess duties.After tea, some of the ladies drew a little closer together: they were the committee, I believe, and Mrs Harrowby read aloud, for the benefit of all present, a short report of the work that had been done during the last three months, and then some one else sketched out what they hoped to do during the summer, and what they were in want of to enable them to carry out these intentions. Then Lady Hebe announced Miss Milwards offer of a day’s entertainment for the girls at Crossburn House, and Miss Milward was duly thanked; and there was a good deal of practical and some very unpractical talk, during which Mrs Harrowby and Hebe managed to introduce the Misses Derwent as new members whose assistance would be of great value, Hebe going on to say that Miss Derwent had kindly consented to take her own place during her absence in London. Altogether, it was cheerful and informal, and, to Stasy especially, very amusing.But just as the Derwents were beginning to feel more at home, and Blanche had been introduced to Rosy Milward, and Stasy was laughing at Miss Wandle’s despair abouthergirls’ insubordination at the singing class, which was her special charge, there fell a wet blanket on the little party. The door opened, and “Lady Marth” was announced.Hebe’s face sobered. She had not expected her guardian’s wife to call for her, as she had promised to be back before the hour at which Lady Marth wished her to drive with her to Blissmore, and Hebe was a very punctual person.“Josephine!” she exclaimed. “It is not late. You said you did not want me till—”“Oh no, you are not late,” said the new-comer, after shaking hands with Mrs Harrowby and one or two others. “I only came on because Archie”—and here she suddenly turned and looked round her—“where is he? I thought he was behind me—”“Who—Archie Dunstan?” said Hebe.“Yes; he wanted to see you about something or other—fishing or something—and he did not venture to come on here alone, when he heard there was a meeting going on. But it’s over, isn’t it? It doesn’t look very solemn.”“Well, I think we have discussed everything we had to settle,” said Mrs Harrowby, getting up again from the chair beside Lady Marth, which she had momentarily occupied. “I must say a word or two to Miss— Oh, here he is, Lady Marth—here is Mr Dunstan.”

The second event which about this time made a little break in the monotony of the lives at Pinnerton Lodge came out of the first; for it was the result of much consideration on Lady Hebe’s part as to what she could do to enliven things for these two girls, who seemed in a sense to have been thrown across her path.

She knew that it was useless to appeal to Lady Marth, her guardian’s wife—a woman who had deliberately narrowed her life and her sympathies by restricting all her interests to a small and very exclusive clique, which was the more to be regretted as she was naturally intelligent and quick of discernment, without the excuse of poor Lady Harriot Dunstan’s intense native stupidity. But Hebe managed to have a good talk with Mrs Selwyn—“Aunt Grace”—the very morning after the Derwents’ visit to Alderwood, and Aunt Grace’s own interest in the new-comers being keen, she was delighted to find Hebe’s enlisted on their behalf.

“I am very sorry I am leaving so immediately,” said Mrs Selwyn. “I might have been of a little use to them, even though very little. You see, no one is altogether to blame in a case like this. Life is short, and there are only so many hours in each day, and no one can be in two places at once, or full of conflicting interests at the same time. People who are half their lives in London, in the thick of the things of the day, all have too much upon them; itisdifficult to get to know much of those who are quite out of it. And the Derwents are only half English, too.”

“Then do you think it a mistake for them to have come to live here?” said Hebe.

“I scarcely know; I can’t judge. They have put themselves in adifficultposition, but there may have been excellent reasons for their leaving France. If they are very high-minded, superior women, they may be happy, and make interests for themselves, and not fret about things they cannot have. Certainly they—the mother, I should say—is far too refined to struggle or strain after society.”

“And the elder one is, I do believe, an extraordinarily high-minded girl,” said Hebe, with a sort of enthusiasm. “Still, it isn’t fair upon her to be shut out from things; and the little one, though she is as tall as I”—with a smile—“says frankly that she finds it woefully dull.”

“And she is only sixteen,” said Mrs Selwyn; “not out, and with French ideas about young girls. Dear me, it must be very dull indeed for a girl brought up on those lines to think it so.”

“She is not the very least French in herself,” said Hebe. “Just a touch of something out of the common in her tone and manners, perhaps. But I never met a more thoroughly English girl in feeling. Yes, indeed. What will she think when sheisgrown up?”

“Let us hope that things may improve for them a little, before then,” said Mrs Selwyn.

Then the two—the old woman and the young—put their heads together as to what theycoulddo; the result being that, three or four days after the drive to Alderwood, a note was brought to Blanche one morning, inviting her and her sister to afternoon tea at the vicarage.

“I expect one or two young friends living in the neighbourhood,” wrote Mrs Harrowby, the vicaress, “whom you may like to meet, and who, on their side, have some hopes of getting you to help in their little local charities.”

“Humph,” said Stasy, when Blanche read this aloud; “I’ve no vocation for that sort of thing. I think you had better go without me.”

“No, I certainly won’t,” said her sister, without much misgiving. For she saw that, notwithstanding Stasy’s ungraciousness, she was secretly pleased at even this mild prospect of a little variety.

Mrs Harrowby’s attentions hitherto—though her good offices had been bespoken for the Derwents by her brother at Blissmore—had been less friendly, and more, so to say, professional. She was a very busy woman, almost too scrupulous in her determination to be “the same to everybody,” to show no difference between her bearing towards the retired tradespeople of Pinnerton Green, and towards Lady Marth, or other county dignitaries; the result being, that no attention she ever paid to any one was considered much of a compliment. But she was well-born and well-bred, though not specially endowed with tact.

And she was honestly pleased when Lady Hebe appealed to her to suggestsomethingthat might help to enliven the sisters at Pinnerton Lodge.

“Yes,” she agreed, “I have thought it must be very dull for them. And yet I could not exactly take it upon me to suggest their making friends with their neighbours here. Something in their manner has caused a slight prejudice against them. None of the families here have called.”

“What neighbours or families are you talking of, Mrs Harrowby?” said Hebe quickly. She knew the vicar’s wife very well—knew, too, her peculiar way of looking at social things, and was not in the very least in awe of her. “Lady Harriot has called, though—”

“Of course, I was not speaking of neighbours of that kind,” replied Mrs Harrowby, interrupting her. “I meant the Wandles at Pinnerton Villa, and the Bracys: I am sure Adela Bracy is as nice a girl as one could wish to see, and Florence Wandle is good-nature itself. It is much wiser, as well as more Christian, to throw aside those ridiculous ideas of class prejudice, and make the best of the people you live among.”

“Then why should not all the county people call upon the Derwents, as well as the Wandles and Bracys?” said Hebe, with a very innocent air.

Mrs Harrowby coloured a little.

“I don’t know. I don’t see why you should blame them if they don’t, as you evidently don’t blame the Derwents for standing off from the Green people. But, the fact of the matter is, they would have nothing in common with the Derwents. You know yourself, Hebe, Lady Marthcouldn’tfind anything to talk to Mrs Derwent about—now, could she?”

“She could if she chose,” said Hebe; “but I don’t want to talk about Josephine”—she always called her guardian’s wife, who was still a comparatively young woman, by her first name—“she and I don’t agree on several points, but she is very good to me. I am not going to urge her calling on Mrs Derwent, for she wouldn’t, if I did. And I don’t think the Derwents could possibly like the only side of herself she would show them. But putting her aside, I certainly don’t see that theDerwentswould have ‘anything in common’ with the Wandles and people like that, if you take that ground.”

“Then theyshouldhave,” said Mrs Harrowby, who was apt to take refuge in didactic utterances, when she found herself driven into a corner.

Hebe laughed.

“We have not come to the point at all, though we have been talking all this time,” she said. “What I was thinking of was some plan for enlivening the Derwent girls a little.At present,” and she blushed slightly, “I can do nothing, but supposing we ask them to help us with our girls’ guild? You do want to improve it, don’t you? The last meetings have been so deadly dull. And we were speaking of some new things—cooking lessons, was it?”

“Yes, we spoke of that, but I think we must wait till one of the professional cooking ladies comes round. We were speaking of millinery lessons—the girls do make such vulgar guys of themselves.”

“That would be nice,” said Hebe. “I daresay Miss Derwent could help us. And we must have some treats for the girls when the weather is quite warm enough. Let us have a meeting, and talk it all over. You can ask Miss Wandle and Miss Bracy, and I will get Norman’s sister to come, though it is rather beyond their part of the country. For she might get leave to invite the guild to Crossburn. Yes, do let us have a nice afternoon-tea meetinghere, and talk it over comfortably.”

Mrs Harrowby consented. There were not many people who could refuse Hebe anything she had set her heart upon. Besides, the vicars wife had no objection to the proposal. She was kind-hearted, if a trifle dictatorial, and not without a pleasant strain of humour, as well as a fair amount of sympathy.

So, on the appointed afternoon, Blanche and Stasy made their way to the vicarage.

“How pretty you look, Blanchie!” said Stasy, with a gush of sisterly enthusiasm. “I do think you are getting prettier and prettier. England suits you, I suppose,” with a little sigh.

Blanche laughed.

“Suits my looks, I suppose you mean?” she said lightly. Stasy’s admiration amused, but did not much impress her. Indeed she was not of the nature to be much impressed by any admiration. She knew she was “pretty,” as she called it to herself, but the subject never dwelt in her thoughts. And she was entirely without vanity. Many a girl of far less beauty, of no beauty at all, gives a hundred times more consideration to the question of outward appearance than would have been possible under any circumstances for Blanche Derwent.

There seemed to be quite a number of people in the vicarage drawing-room when they entered it. Stasy—who, to tell the truth, was feeling a trifle shy, though wild horses would not have drawn such a confession from her—had insisted on coming some minutes later than the hour at which they had been invited.

“I don’t want to seem so very eager about it,” she said to Blanche. “And if we go early, we are sure to be set down to talk to some of the Green people. It would be horrid.”

To some extent, she was caught in her own trap. A chair was offered her between two girls, neither of whom she had seen before, and who, she immediately decided, must belong to the neighbours she certainly had no reason to feel friendliness towards. For, whatever had been the motive, and though very possibly their staying away was from the social point of view more gratifying than their calling would have been, no kindliness of any kind had been shown or attempted by the good folk of Pinnerton Green to the little family who had come as strangers among them.

Stasy glanced cautiously at the girls beside her. One was plain, not to say ugly, and dressed with almost exaggerated simplicity. Her features were heavy and ill-assorted; her nose was large, and nevertheless seemed too short for the curious length of her face; her eyes—no, she was not looking Stasy’s way—her eyes could not be pronounced upon.

“She is really ugly,” thought Stasy; “I haven’t seen any English girl as ugly as she is. And how very plainly she is dressed: I wonder if it is because she knows she is ugly. It cannot be that she’s poor: all these common people here are rich. Her dress is only”—Stasy gave another covert glance at the cloth skirt touching her own—“only—no, it’s good of its kind, though so plainly made, and yet—”

Yes, there was a “yet,” very decidedly, both as to dress, which was the very best of its kind, and, when the girl slowly turned to Stasy with some trivial remark, as to looks. For her eyes were beautiful, quite beautiful, with the touch of pathos in them which one sometimes sees in eyes which are the only redeeming feature of an undeniably plain face.

“Have a little indulgence for me—I cannot help myself,” such eyes seem to say, and Stasy, sensitive as quicksilver, responded at once to the unspoken appeal.

“Thank you,” she said gently, “I have plenty of room—no, I don’t mind being near the window,” and then she salved over to herself her suavity to “one of those Wandle or Bracy girls,” by reflecting that Blanche had said it would be very wrong indeed to show anything but perfect courtesy and kindliness at a party especially arranged for a charitable object, though a slight misgiving came over her when the owner of the beautiful eyes spoke again in an evidently less conventional and more friendly tone.

“That was your sister who came in with you, was it not? I am so glad to see her more distinctly. She is so—so very lovely.”

Stasy, gratified though she felt on one side, stiffened slightly. Miss Wandle should not comment upon Blanche’s appearance, however favourably.

“Yes,” she said, “every one thinks so.Ido, I can’t deny.”

Then she turned to her neighbour on the right. She was a pretty girl, with wavy brown hair, and a charming rosebud of a face. But her dress, though much more studied than the austere but perfectly fitting tweed, jarred at once on Stasy’s correct instincts. So did her voice, when in reply to the inquiry as to whether any guild business had yet been transacted, she said:

“Oh no, we always have tea first. Mrs Harrowby says it makes us feel more at”—was there or was there not a suspicion of the absence of the aspirate, instantaneously and almost obtrusively corrected?—“at—athome; not so shy about speaking out, you know.”

“Oh indeed,” said Stasy.

Then she turned again to the heavy face and the luminous eyes, in whose depths she now read a twinkle of fun.

“I like you, whoever you are,” she thought. And as at that moment Hebe came up with outstretched hand and cordial “How do you do? You found your way the other day, I hope?” an irrepressible little burst of enthusiasm made its way through her caution.

“Is she not charming? She is always so perfectly sweet and happy,” she said.

“Yes indeed,” her neighbour replied, and the bright responsive smile on her face made one forget everything except the eyes. “She is—perfectlycharming. I like to see that she gives the same impression to strangers as to those who have known her long. I can remember her nearly all my life, and yet every time I see her there seems somethingnew. She is—I daresay you know?—she is going to be married to my brother Norman. Won’t it be delightful to have her for a sister?”

And again the beautiful eyes gleamed with something brighter than their ordinary expression of appeal.

Stasy gasped. Who, then, was this girl? For an instant, a wild, ridiculous idea rushed through her mind that Lady Hebe must be going to marry one of the Wandles or Bracys, so prepossessed was she with her first guess about her plain-featured neighbour. But she dismissed it at once, and she began to feel shocked at her own want of discernment.

The colour mounted into her face as she replied to her companions question.

“I didn’t know; at least,” hesitatingly, “I am not sure. I think I did hear something, but I can’t remember. I— Please don’t think me rude, but I don’t know your name.”

“I am Rosy Milward. We live at Crossburn, the dearest old, old house in the world,” said the girl.

“Oh!” said Stasy. “Yes, I have heard your name. It will be delightful to have Lady Hebe for your sister.”

But her tone was slightly melancholy. She had been cherishing, half unconsciously perhaps, dreams of special friendship, romantic friendship, between Lady Hebe and herself (though she called it “us,” reluctant to leave out Blanche from anything so charming). And now her dreams seemed shattered. She—Hebe—was going to be married, and here was a sister-friend all ready made for her. It was much better never to expect to see or know any more of the future wife of Mr Norman Milward.

Rosy was conscious of the underlying disappointment, though she could not have defined it.

“I wish I could invite them to come to Crossburn,” she thought to herself. “I don’t like to see such a young girl so subdued and almost sad. But unless grandmamma would call, of course I can’t, and I’m afraid there is no use in trying for that.”

The Milwards had no mother, and their father’s mother, who had to some extent brought them up, was old, and naturally disinclined to make new acquaintances without strong motives for doing so; somewhat narrow and exclusive she was, too, in her ideas, and in this a great contrast to the old friend, with whom, nevertheless, she had much in common—Mrs Selwyn.

Just as Miss Milward was feeling about for some other topic of conversation which might interest her companion, Stasy bent towards her.

“Would you mind telling me who the girl is on my other side—she can’t hear, she is speaking to some one else?”

Rosy glanced across Stasy: she had forgotten for the moment who was sitting there.

“Oh yes,” she said; “that is—let me see. I often confuse the two families: they are cousins. Oh yes; that is Miss Wandle—Florry Wandle, Mrs Harrowby calls her. She helps a good deal with the guild. She has a nice, pretty face, hasn’t she?”

“Verypretty,” Stasy agreed, and she meant what she said, and something in Miss Milward’s tone gratified her. There was a tacit and tactful taking for granted that their little commentary on Miss Wandle was from the same point of view: there was no touch of surprise that Stasy did not already know the girl, or that the Pinnerton Green folk were not of the Derwents’ “world.”

Then they went on to talk a little of the guild and its interests, till a summons to Miss Milward to help at the tea-table interrupted thetête-à-tête. But Stasy’s mercurial spirits had risen again, and they rose still higher, when, encouraged by an almost imperceptible signal from Lady Hebe, she ventured to leave her place, and, as one of the youngest present, volunteered her services in handing about bread and butter and cakes.

And Blanche, meanwhile? On entering, she had at once been led over to the other end of the room, which was a long one, by Mrs Harrowby, and ensconsed in a corner beside Lady Hebe.

“Now, I want to talk to you very seriously, Miss Derwent,” said Blanche’s “girl with the happy face.”

“Mrs Harrowby and I are counting on your doing great things to help us. You see it is such a disadvantage in any little work of this kind for those who principally manage it to be so much away. And if youcouldtake interest in it, it would be such a good thing for the girls. For I suppose”—and she glanced up with a touch of apology—“I suppose you will not be going to London for the seasonthisyear, as you have come here so lately?”

“No,” said Blanche simply, “we shall certainly stay here. I doubt if we shall ever go to London except for a day or two’s shopping: we have no friends there.”

“It will be different, of course, when you have been longer in England,” said Hebe. “And,” she added with a smile, “when your sister comes out, I scarcely thinkshewould be satisfied with nothing more amusing than Pinnerton, however contentyouare.”

Blanche coloured a little.

“You think me better than I am,” she said. “I should enjoy—things—too, but if one can’t have them? But I think Ishouldmind for Stasy more than for myself. She is naturally more dependent on outside life than I. She does feel it very dull and lonely here, and I wish she had some companions.” Hebe looked and felt full of sympathy.

“I hope your life here will brighten by degrees,” she said. “Don’t you think your sister would do something to help us, too? She seems so clever.”

“Yes, she is very quick, and she can be very amusing,” said Blanche. “We should both be glad to do anything we can. But have you not a good many helpers already? And those other ladies—the residents here—theydon’t go away. Could not they take charge in your absence much better than a stranger like me?”

She glanced across the room to where Miss Adela Bracy, a small, capable-looking, dark girl, was at the moment saying something in a low voice to the rosebud-faced Florry Wandle. Lady Hebe’s eyes followed hers.

“They are very good, so far as they go,” she replied, “but they are not quite capable of taking the lead. And they have really as much to do as they can manage. It is some one to replace myself when I am away that I want to find. And I could explain it all to you so well, and get advice from you too, I have no doubt.”

“I am very ignorant about such things,” said Blanche.

“Yes, but you have a good head, and you”—here Hebe smiled and blushed a little—“well, you must know how I mean. It would be so different explaining things to you: you would see them from our point of view. These girls are very good-natured and nice, but I never feel sure that they perfectly understand.”

And then she went on to tell Blanche further details about the little work she had inaugurated and carried on—so simply, and yet earnestly, that Blanche’s full interest was quickly won, and they went on talking eagerly till tea and interruption came, as Hebe had to help Mrs Harrowby with her hostess duties.

After tea, some of the ladies drew a little closer together: they were the committee, I believe, and Mrs Harrowby read aloud, for the benefit of all present, a short report of the work that had been done during the last three months, and then some one else sketched out what they hoped to do during the summer, and what they were in want of to enable them to carry out these intentions. Then Lady Hebe announced Miss Milwards offer of a day’s entertainment for the girls at Crossburn House, and Miss Milward was duly thanked; and there was a good deal of practical and some very unpractical talk, during which Mrs Harrowby and Hebe managed to introduce the Misses Derwent as new members whose assistance would be of great value, Hebe going on to say that Miss Derwent had kindly consented to take her own place during her absence in London. Altogether, it was cheerful and informal, and, to Stasy especially, very amusing.

But just as the Derwents were beginning to feel more at home, and Blanche had been introduced to Rosy Milward, and Stasy was laughing at Miss Wandle’s despair abouthergirls’ insubordination at the singing class, which was her special charge, there fell a wet blanket on the little party. The door opened, and “Lady Marth” was announced.

Hebe’s face sobered. She had not expected her guardian’s wife to call for her, as she had promised to be back before the hour at which Lady Marth wished her to drive with her to Blissmore, and Hebe was a very punctual person.

“Josephine!” she exclaimed. “It is not late. You said you did not want me till—”

“Oh no, you are not late,” said the new-comer, after shaking hands with Mrs Harrowby and one or two others. “I only came on because Archie”—and here she suddenly turned and looked round her—“where is he? I thought he was behind me—”

“Who—Archie Dunstan?” said Hebe.

“Yes; he wanted to see you about something or other—fishing or something—and he did not venture to come on here alone, when he heard there was a meeting going on. But it’s over, isn’t it? It doesn’t look very solemn.”

“Well, I think we have discussed everything we had to settle,” said Mrs Harrowby, getting up again from the chair beside Lady Marth, which she had momentarily occupied. “I must say a word or two to Miss— Oh, here he is, Lady Marth—here is Mr Dunstan.”

Chapter Eleven.Ruffled Plumage.“Yes, here I am,” said the young man, as he entered the room and hastened up to Mrs Harrowby, no one suspecting that in his rapid transit he had managed to take in the fact of certain individuals’ presence. “Yes, here I am; and I should apologise, I know, but it is all Lady Marth’s fault. She dragged me here, and then left me in the lurch with the ponies at the door, quite forgetting I was not the groom. And then, no doubt, she has been wondering ‘what in the world has become of that Archie.’”The few within hearing could not help laughing, he reproduced so cleverly Lady Marth’s coldly languid tones.She laughed herself, and her laugh was a pleasant one.“You are very impertinent,” she said. “And as for dragging you here—youknowyou were dying for an excuse to get in to see what one of Hebe’s meetings was like. He reminded me of the legendary female who exists in so many families, you know, whose husband was a Freemason, and she hid herself to overhear their secrets,” she went on, to Miss Milward, who happened to be nearest her, Mrs Harrowby by this time having crossed the room to Florry Wandle and her cousin.“Well, my curiosity has not been rewarded—nor punished,” said Mr Dunstan.And as he spoke he glanced at Blanche, who was standing a little behind Rosy. He had already shaken hands with her, in an unobtrusive, friendly, yet deferential way, which somehow gratified her, simple and un-self-conscious as she was.“He is such a rattle of a young fellow,” she said to herself; “I wonder he remembers having met me before.”“WhenwillHebe be ready?” said Lady Marth, with a sort of soft complaint, as if she had been kept waiting for hours. “Does she need to go on talking confidentially to all those bakers’ and brewers’ daughters whom she is so fond of?—Can’t you give her a hint to be quick, Rosy?”She half turned, laying her hand on what she supposed to be Miss Milward’s arm; but, somehow, Rosy had moved away. The arm Lady Marth actually touched was Blanche’s.Blanche started. She had been watching Archie.“Can I—” she began; but before she had time to say more, Lady Marth drew herself back.“WhereisRosy?” she said haughtily. “I thought—I thought the meeting was over, and that we were only ourselves. I really must go,” and she stood up, drawing her cloak, which had partly slipped off, more closely round her shoulders.Mr Dunstans face grew stern, all the boyishness died out of it, and he looked ten years older.“Miss Derwent,” he said, in a peculiarly clear and most respectful tone, “I do beg your pardon. I did not notice till this moment that you were standing. If you are going, Lady Marth, you will allow me to move your chair,” and, as he spoke, he drew it forward a little.Lady Marth gave him an icy glance over her shoulder, and moved away. Blanche simply accepted the courtesy.“I want to go too,” she said quietly; “but I must see Lady Hebe for one moment, first.”“Don’t hurry,” said Mr Dunstan; “she is saying good-bye to those girls now, and she is looking towards you. It will do Lady Marth good to be kept waiting for once, so pray be as deliberate as you like. No one asked her to come here, unless—unless, indeed, I did so myself. I don’t— She is quite odious, sometimes,” he went on, disconnectedly, looking, for once,notequal to the occasion.Blanche lifted her serene eyes to his face.“Did you think she was rude to me?” she said. “Please don’t mind. She does not know me, or anything about me, so what does it matter? I should mind if any one I knew or cared about was disagreeable or unkind; but when it is a perfect stranger it is quite different.”The young man looked at her with a mixture of admiration and perplexity. Had she not taken in the covert impertinence of Lady Marth’s speech?He smiled a little as he replied. “You are very philosophical and very sensible, Miss Derwent,” he said. “But still, I am afraid you must think English people have very bad manners.”“I have not seen many; I can scarcely judge,” she said. “But I should not like to say so. I think Lady Hebe and that old lady, Mrs Selwyn, and Mrs Harrowby—oh, and others I could name—have charming manners.”“Why don’t you include my aunt—by marriage only—at Alderwood?” he said maliciously.Blanche laughed a little.“Some people can’t help being awkward, I suppose,” she said. “She means to be kind, I think.”Archie’s face brightened.“Now you are better than sensible,” he said eagerly—“you are truly kind and charitable. And you are not mistaken. My aunt does mean to be kind, so far as she can understand it. A great many ugly things in this world come from ignorance, after all.”“And from want of imagination,” said Blanche, thoughtfully. “Want of power to put one’s self in the place of another.”She was beginning to think there was more in this young man, who had struck her at first as a mere boyish rattle; she was beginning to have a touch of the delightful suspicion that he was one who would “understand” her; and her face grew luminous, and her sweet eyes brighter, as she spoke.He glanced at her again, with a smile in which there was no disappointment for her.“Yes, I often think so; I have come to think so. But you are very young to have made such a discovery.”Blanche could scarcely help laughing at his tone, she had so completely made up her mind that he was little, if any, older than she.“Why,” she began, “I cannot be much—” But here she suddenly caught sight of Stasy’s face looking across at her with a sort of indignant appeal.“Do come away, Blanchie,” it seemed to say.“Something has rubbed her the wrong way,” thought Blanche, and she moved forward at once. “I think my sister wants me,” she said, with a little movement of the head, as if in farewell.Archie Dunstan followed her with his eyes; but he was not long left in peace.“Can’tyouget Hebe to come away?” said Lady Marth, in a tone that very little more would have rendered querulous. “Rosy has gone now. Everybody has gone. You are as bad as Hebe, Archie. What on earth could you find to talk to that Miss Wandle, or Bracy, or whoever she was, about?”“She was neither a Miss Wandle nor a Miss Bracy, Lady Marth,” said Mr Dunstan. “I thought you had more discernment,” and he calmly walked away, entirely disregarding her request that he would summon Hebe.Lady Marth was angry. She had known that the girl he was talking to wasnotone of the Pinnerton Green tradespeople’s daughters, and she had had a strong suspicion that shewasMiss Derwent. But, of course, she was not going to allow this. She had taken one of her violent and unreasonable prejudices to the Derwents, whom she knew almost nothing about, and would not have felt the slightest interest in, had she not found out that Hebe had come across them, and meant or wished to be kind to them. And she was really very much attached to Hebe, and cared for her good opinion. It annoyed her that she had not been herself appealed to by her husband’s ward in the matter, little sympathy though she would have felt about it, as what she called “one of Hebe’s fads.”Perhaps, on the whole, it had been a mistake on the girl’s part not to have made an effort to enlist Lady Marth’s interest in the Derwents. But she had been afraid to do so, knowing by experience how extraordinarily disagreeable “Josephine” could be to any one she considered beneath her. Still, her reticence had aroused deeper prejudice on Lady Marth’s side than need have been drawn out; and Mr Dunstan’s manner and tone increased it.Blanche made her way somewhat anxiously to Stasy.“Do let us go,” said the younger girl in a half-whisper. “I am sure mamma will be wondering why we are so long,” she added in a louder tone, for Mrs Harrowby’s benefit.“I was only waiting because Lady Hebe wanted to say something to me,” said Blanche; and Hebe, who had said good-bye by this time to Miss Wandle and her cousin, came hurrying up.“I won’t keep you any longer just now,” she said, for she had an instinctive dread of Lady Marth; “I am so sorry. Just tell me this—can you meet me here alone some afternoon to look over the account-books, so that it may all be quite clear to you?”Blanche hesitated. Why should they meet “here?” She could understand Hebe’s not asking her to go to East Moddersham, considering that Lady Marth had not seen fit to call upon Mrs Derwent, but why should not Hebe offer to come to Pinnerton Lodge herself? She glanced up. Hebe was slightly flushed, her lips were parted, and she seemed a little anxious. The expression was new to Blanche on that usually untroubled face, and it touched her. Blanche’s dignity was too simple and true for her to think much about what was “due” to it.“Yes,” she said, “I can easily do so.”“Oh, thank you,” said Hebe in a tone of relief.Then a day and hour were rapidly decided upon, and in another minute or two the sisters found themselves outside the vicarage, on their way home, after saying good-bye to Mrs Harrowby, cordially on Blanche’s part, most cordially on that of the vicar’s wife, somewhat stiffly on Stasys. Mr Dunstan held the door open for them as they passed out, and his markedly deferential bow somewhat smoothed the younger girl’s ruffled plumage.“Thatman knows how to behave like a gentleman,” she said. “Who is he, Blanchie? Have you seen him before?”“Yes,” said Blanche; “he was at Alderwood the afternoon mamma and I called there. I thought he was quite a boy—he looks very young—but I’m not sure about it now. Something in his way of speaking and his manner altogether make me think that perhaps he is older than he looks.”Stasy listened with interest.“I like him,” she said decidedly, and for the moment Blanche forgot the expression on her sister’s face which had made her hasten the leave-taking.“What was the matter, Stasy?” she asked, when it recurred to her. “Why did you look so vexed and uncomfortable?”“Uncomfortable!” repeated Stasy. “Oh dear, no. I am not afraid of any of those people. Theycouldn’tmake me uncomfortable. I was only angry—very angry. What do you think Mrs Harrowby said?”“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Blanche. “When I looked across at you, I thought you were getting on so well. Lady Hebe said that that was Miss Milward whom you were talking to, and that she is so nice.”“The plain girl—indeed, she is almost ugly—with the beautiful eyes,” said Stasy eagerly; “yes, she was awfully nice. But Mrs Harrowby spoilt it all. Just when everybody was standing up to go, she came bustling forward—”“She doesn’t bustle,” interposed Blanche.“Well, never mind—up she came, and began talking to those Wandle girls and me in a patronising sort of way: ‘Your roads lie in the same direction; you will be going home together, I suppose?’ I stared, and to do them justice,theylooked uncomfortable. ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘I think you do not know me. I came with my sister, Miss Derwent. I have not the—’ Then she interrupted me. ‘You don’t mean to say you have not made friends yet? and such near neighbours!’ And she was on the point, the very point, Blanche, of insisting on our ‘making friends,’ as she called it, when Lady Hebe came up about some books or something, and I managed to get out of the way. That was why I was fidgeting so to get hold of you. Blanchie, Iwon’tbe treated like that. I wish we had never gone to that horrid tea-meeting.”Blanche looked distressed.“And yet, Stasy,” she said, “you were the one to want to make friends out of school, so to say, with some of the Blissmore girls—the very same class as those here, some of them actually relations.”“Not all of the same class,” said Stasy; “some of them are much more ladies, only poor. And, besides, that would have beenquitedifferent, don’t you see, Blanchie? It would have been me, or us, being kind to them—not us being put on a level with them, as that Mrs Harrowby wanted to do. But I don’t think she will try that sort of thing again, with me, at least.”“How did the girls take what you said?” her sister inquired quietly.Stasy seemed a little uncomfortable.“Oh well, you know, it wasn’t pleasant for them either. The dark one—she’s much cleverer and quicker than the pretty, stupid, fair one—the dark one looked very grave, and I think she got a very little red.”“Poor girl!” said Blanche—and something in her tone made Stasy wince—“I daresay she did.Theydid not deserve to be punished, that I can see.”“I never said they did, unless—well, if they are to be counted the same as us, they should have tried to be kind and ‘neighbourly.’ How I do detest that word! It is so inconsistent. You seem to think I should have been gushing over with amiability to them, just because they have not even been honestly, vulgarly kind. Not that we wanted anything of the sort, of course. We are completely and entirely independent of them.”“Yes; and for that very reason you could well have afforded to be simply courteous. You may be pretty sure that if they have not called, it has been that they thought we should not like it; and I don’t say that we are in any way bound to make friends with people whose interests are quite different from ours, and who would have very little in common with us. But it could have done no sort of harm to have spoken pleasantly to them, andevento have walked home together, that I can see.”Stasy did not reply. She was beginning to feel rather ashamed of herself. Had she behaved “snobbishly?” Her cheeks burned at the thought of having appeared to do so: I fear her first misgiving dealt more with this possible “appearing,” than with the actual wrong or contemptibleness of her feelings. Blanche walked on silently. She was thinking to herself how the same spirit came out in different positions. There was Stasy, now, sixteen-years-old Stasy, showing already the same worldly narrow-mindedness, which, had not Blanche’s own dignity and self-respect been of exceptional quality, might have mortified her not a little when shown to herself by Lady Marth.“I would not tell Stasy of it at present, on any account,” she thought; “but some day I shall let her know how curiously the two incidents came together, and let her draw her own deductions.”But she was sorry for Stasy too. She was at all times very tender of her sister’s faults and follies, and intensely sympathising in her troubles. So she exerted herself to disperse the little cloud of mortification which had gathered on Stasy’s face; and when the two entered the library, where their mother was waiting for them, they were both bright and cheerful, and ready to relate to her all the incidents of the afternoon which were likely to interest her.“Lady Marth was there, you say?” she inquired. “I did not know she was likely to belong to the girls’ guild, or whatever you call it. I don’t know that I should have cared to let you go had I thought she would be there.”Blanche looked rather surprised.“Why, mamma, what does it matter? Do you mean because she has not called?”“Not exactly. But she is the sort of woman who, unless she takes it into her head to be civil to people, can be—very much the reverse. And”—Mrs Derwent’s face hardened a little—“I don’t want you and Stasy, my darlings, to be exposed to that kind of thing. Aunt Grace hinted at something of the kind, and since then I have remembered who Lady Marth is. She belongs to a family of no ancestry, but which has become rapidly prominent through a mixture of cleverness and good luck. They—her people, the Banfleets—are now enormously rich, and pride themselves on their extreme exclusiveness. They areplus royalistes que le roi.”“How detestable!” said Stasy, “and how contemptible! I am sure I don’t want to know them.”“You can’t call them really contemptible,” said her mother. “They are a very talented family, in several directions too. And they are very generous and liberal and honourable. But this one weakness—the trying to be just the one thing they are not—spoils them.”“And, very likely, if theywereof very old descent, they would care less about it,” said Blanche reflectively.“Perhaps so, but that does not always follow. Sir Conway Marth is a much wider-minded man, but not specially clever. And he is of a very old family. I used to know his sisters. They were thoroughly nice; more like that girl you have taken such a fancy to—his ward, I mean,” said Mrs Derwent. “But we cannot expect to know her in an ordinary way if she lives with the Marths. I wish—” And then she hesitated, while a troubled look crept over her face.Blanche, who was sitting next her, took her hand and fondled it softly.“I know what you are going to say, mother dear,” she said, “and you are not to say it. Everything you have done has been for the best, and with the best motives, and you are just not to wish it undone. We have a mass of things to be grateful for and happy about, and why should we worry about things that, through no fault of ours, don’t come in our way.”“Some of them may come in our way,” said Stasy, whoso versatile spirits had already gone up again. “I shouldn’t wonder if that nice, ugly Miss Milward were to call on us, and ask us to go to see her.—Oh Blanchie, there’s Flopper rushing about over the flower-beds; he really must be tied up, till he sobers down a little.”“Run out and tie him up, then,” said Blanche, and off Stasy set. Flopper was a new acquisition; a very interesting and aggravating retriever puppy, with all the charms and foibles of puppyhood intensely developed in him. Looking after Flopper was very wholesome for Stasy, her sister had discovered.Blanche turned again to her mother.“Mamma dear,” she said, “I really think we must not get into the way of seeing the worst side of things. If we are a little lonely, any way we have each other, and such a charming home. Could any one picture to themselves a sweeter room than this library? How our French friends would admire it!”“Yes,” said Mrs Derwent, “it is a delightful room. Of course, the name is rather inappropriate, we have so few books.”“We must get some more,” said Blanche; “by degrees, of course.”“I fear it must be by degrees,” said her mother; “I cannot afford anything for the house at present, it has cost so much more than I expected. And there seems some little difficulty about our income still; the new partners are asking for longer time to pay us out in, and it will make it difficult to get good investments if the capital is realised so irregularly.”“I don’t understand about it,” said Blanche. “But it doesn’t matter for the present. When Stasy is grown up, it would be nice to take her about a little; perhaps to London now and then, if by that time we have made some friends there. Mamma, couldn’t we invite some of our old friends to come to stay with us a little—Madame de Caillemont, for instance?”“She is too frail now, I fear, to come so far,” said Mrs Derwent. “And as for any one else—no, I don’t feel as if I should like it. Do not think me small or childish, Blanchie, but—you know French peoples ideas? They are all already expecting, from one day to another, to hear of your making some grand marriage; they thought a good deal of us as well-connected English people, you know. And, I confess, it would mortify me for them, any of them, to see how—how completely ‘out of it all’ we are.”“Poor little mother!” said Blanche caressingly, “you really mustn’t get gloomy.Youdon’t think I want to marry and leave you, do you? I can’timaginesuch a thing. I cannot in my wildest dreams picture to myself the going away from you and Stasy! Never mind about that; but I do understand that you would feel rather sore at any friends thinking we were more friendless here than in France. There is no need to invite any one at present. I think I had a vague idea that it might cheer you up a little. This house is so pretty; I should enjoy showing it off.”“I should like you to have the pleasure of doing so,” said Mrs Derwent wistfully. “You are always so sweet, my Blanchie. I can’t help feeling as if nothing and nobody would be good enough for you; the faintest idea of any one in the very least looking down upon you is—”“Mother dear, it is not that. These people don’t know us, or anything about us. There is nothing mortifying or worth minding that I can see in people’s ignoring you, when they know nothing about you. And as for rudeness—that always lowers the rude person, not the object of it.”Mrs Derwent looked up quickly.“You don’t mean that any one has been actuallyrudeto you, Blanchie? Was there anything this afternoon?”Blanche hesitated. She was incapable of uttering a word that was not true; yet, again, she was determined to tell her mother nothing of Lady Marth’s impertinence.“Mamma,” she said, “I am thinking a great deal about Stasy.Shewas rude, at least it was tacitly rude, this afternoon,” and she related the incident we know of.“It was unladylike and unkind,” said Mrs Derwent. “Yes, I am anxious about Stasy. This uncertain position that we have got into is bad for her in every way.”“It may all come right,” said Blanche cheerfully. “But I am glad you think I spoke properly to Stasy. Let us hope it will all come right, mamma, ifwedo our best to be kind and good.”

“Yes, here I am,” said the young man, as he entered the room and hastened up to Mrs Harrowby, no one suspecting that in his rapid transit he had managed to take in the fact of certain individuals’ presence. “Yes, here I am; and I should apologise, I know, but it is all Lady Marth’s fault. She dragged me here, and then left me in the lurch with the ponies at the door, quite forgetting I was not the groom. And then, no doubt, she has been wondering ‘what in the world has become of that Archie.’”

The few within hearing could not help laughing, he reproduced so cleverly Lady Marth’s coldly languid tones.

She laughed herself, and her laugh was a pleasant one.

“You are very impertinent,” she said. “And as for dragging you here—youknowyou were dying for an excuse to get in to see what one of Hebe’s meetings was like. He reminded me of the legendary female who exists in so many families, you know, whose husband was a Freemason, and she hid herself to overhear their secrets,” she went on, to Miss Milward, who happened to be nearest her, Mrs Harrowby by this time having crossed the room to Florry Wandle and her cousin.

“Well, my curiosity has not been rewarded—nor punished,” said Mr Dunstan.

And as he spoke he glanced at Blanche, who was standing a little behind Rosy. He had already shaken hands with her, in an unobtrusive, friendly, yet deferential way, which somehow gratified her, simple and un-self-conscious as she was.

“He is such a rattle of a young fellow,” she said to herself; “I wonder he remembers having met me before.”

“WhenwillHebe be ready?” said Lady Marth, with a sort of soft complaint, as if she had been kept waiting for hours. “Does she need to go on talking confidentially to all those bakers’ and brewers’ daughters whom she is so fond of?—Can’t you give her a hint to be quick, Rosy?”

She half turned, laying her hand on what she supposed to be Miss Milward’s arm; but, somehow, Rosy had moved away. The arm Lady Marth actually touched was Blanche’s.

Blanche started. She had been watching Archie.

“Can I—” she began; but before she had time to say more, Lady Marth drew herself back.

“WhereisRosy?” she said haughtily. “I thought—I thought the meeting was over, and that we were only ourselves. I really must go,” and she stood up, drawing her cloak, which had partly slipped off, more closely round her shoulders.

Mr Dunstans face grew stern, all the boyishness died out of it, and he looked ten years older.

“Miss Derwent,” he said, in a peculiarly clear and most respectful tone, “I do beg your pardon. I did not notice till this moment that you were standing. If you are going, Lady Marth, you will allow me to move your chair,” and, as he spoke, he drew it forward a little.

Lady Marth gave him an icy glance over her shoulder, and moved away. Blanche simply accepted the courtesy.

“I want to go too,” she said quietly; “but I must see Lady Hebe for one moment, first.”

“Don’t hurry,” said Mr Dunstan; “she is saying good-bye to those girls now, and she is looking towards you. It will do Lady Marth good to be kept waiting for once, so pray be as deliberate as you like. No one asked her to come here, unless—unless, indeed, I did so myself. I don’t— She is quite odious, sometimes,” he went on, disconnectedly, looking, for once,notequal to the occasion.

Blanche lifted her serene eyes to his face.

“Did you think she was rude to me?” she said. “Please don’t mind. She does not know me, or anything about me, so what does it matter? I should mind if any one I knew or cared about was disagreeable or unkind; but when it is a perfect stranger it is quite different.”

The young man looked at her with a mixture of admiration and perplexity. Had she not taken in the covert impertinence of Lady Marth’s speech?

He smiled a little as he replied. “You are very philosophical and very sensible, Miss Derwent,” he said. “But still, I am afraid you must think English people have very bad manners.”

“I have not seen many; I can scarcely judge,” she said. “But I should not like to say so. I think Lady Hebe and that old lady, Mrs Selwyn, and Mrs Harrowby—oh, and others I could name—have charming manners.”

“Why don’t you include my aunt—by marriage only—at Alderwood?” he said maliciously.

Blanche laughed a little.

“Some people can’t help being awkward, I suppose,” she said. “She means to be kind, I think.”

Archie’s face brightened.

“Now you are better than sensible,” he said eagerly—“you are truly kind and charitable. And you are not mistaken. My aunt does mean to be kind, so far as she can understand it. A great many ugly things in this world come from ignorance, after all.”

“And from want of imagination,” said Blanche, thoughtfully. “Want of power to put one’s self in the place of another.”

She was beginning to think there was more in this young man, who had struck her at first as a mere boyish rattle; she was beginning to have a touch of the delightful suspicion that he was one who would “understand” her; and her face grew luminous, and her sweet eyes brighter, as she spoke.

He glanced at her again, with a smile in which there was no disappointment for her.

“Yes, I often think so; I have come to think so. But you are very young to have made such a discovery.”

Blanche could scarcely help laughing at his tone, she had so completely made up her mind that he was little, if any, older than she.

“Why,” she began, “I cannot be much—” But here she suddenly caught sight of Stasy’s face looking across at her with a sort of indignant appeal.

“Do come away, Blanchie,” it seemed to say.

“Something has rubbed her the wrong way,” thought Blanche, and she moved forward at once. “I think my sister wants me,” she said, with a little movement of the head, as if in farewell.

Archie Dunstan followed her with his eyes; but he was not long left in peace.

“Can’tyouget Hebe to come away?” said Lady Marth, in a tone that very little more would have rendered querulous. “Rosy has gone now. Everybody has gone. You are as bad as Hebe, Archie. What on earth could you find to talk to that Miss Wandle, or Bracy, or whoever she was, about?”

“She was neither a Miss Wandle nor a Miss Bracy, Lady Marth,” said Mr Dunstan. “I thought you had more discernment,” and he calmly walked away, entirely disregarding her request that he would summon Hebe.

Lady Marth was angry. She had known that the girl he was talking to wasnotone of the Pinnerton Green tradespeople’s daughters, and she had had a strong suspicion that shewasMiss Derwent. But, of course, she was not going to allow this. She had taken one of her violent and unreasonable prejudices to the Derwents, whom she knew almost nothing about, and would not have felt the slightest interest in, had she not found out that Hebe had come across them, and meant or wished to be kind to them. And she was really very much attached to Hebe, and cared for her good opinion. It annoyed her that she had not been herself appealed to by her husband’s ward in the matter, little sympathy though she would have felt about it, as what she called “one of Hebe’s fads.”

Perhaps, on the whole, it had been a mistake on the girl’s part not to have made an effort to enlist Lady Marth’s interest in the Derwents. But she had been afraid to do so, knowing by experience how extraordinarily disagreeable “Josephine” could be to any one she considered beneath her. Still, her reticence had aroused deeper prejudice on Lady Marth’s side than need have been drawn out; and Mr Dunstan’s manner and tone increased it.

Blanche made her way somewhat anxiously to Stasy.

“Do let us go,” said the younger girl in a half-whisper. “I am sure mamma will be wondering why we are so long,” she added in a louder tone, for Mrs Harrowby’s benefit.

“I was only waiting because Lady Hebe wanted to say something to me,” said Blanche; and Hebe, who had said good-bye by this time to Miss Wandle and her cousin, came hurrying up.

“I won’t keep you any longer just now,” she said, for she had an instinctive dread of Lady Marth; “I am so sorry. Just tell me this—can you meet me here alone some afternoon to look over the account-books, so that it may all be quite clear to you?”

Blanche hesitated. Why should they meet “here?” She could understand Hebe’s not asking her to go to East Moddersham, considering that Lady Marth had not seen fit to call upon Mrs Derwent, but why should not Hebe offer to come to Pinnerton Lodge herself? She glanced up. Hebe was slightly flushed, her lips were parted, and she seemed a little anxious. The expression was new to Blanche on that usually untroubled face, and it touched her. Blanche’s dignity was too simple and true for her to think much about what was “due” to it.

“Yes,” she said, “I can easily do so.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Hebe in a tone of relief.

Then a day and hour were rapidly decided upon, and in another minute or two the sisters found themselves outside the vicarage, on their way home, after saying good-bye to Mrs Harrowby, cordially on Blanche’s part, most cordially on that of the vicar’s wife, somewhat stiffly on Stasys. Mr Dunstan held the door open for them as they passed out, and his markedly deferential bow somewhat smoothed the younger girl’s ruffled plumage.

“Thatman knows how to behave like a gentleman,” she said. “Who is he, Blanchie? Have you seen him before?”

“Yes,” said Blanche; “he was at Alderwood the afternoon mamma and I called there. I thought he was quite a boy—he looks very young—but I’m not sure about it now. Something in his way of speaking and his manner altogether make me think that perhaps he is older than he looks.”

Stasy listened with interest.

“I like him,” she said decidedly, and for the moment Blanche forgot the expression on her sister’s face which had made her hasten the leave-taking.

“What was the matter, Stasy?” she asked, when it recurred to her. “Why did you look so vexed and uncomfortable?”

“Uncomfortable!” repeated Stasy. “Oh dear, no. I am not afraid of any of those people. Theycouldn’tmake me uncomfortable. I was only angry—very angry. What do you think Mrs Harrowby said?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Blanche. “When I looked across at you, I thought you were getting on so well. Lady Hebe said that that was Miss Milward whom you were talking to, and that she is so nice.”

“The plain girl—indeed, she is almost ugly—with the beautiful eyes,” said Stasy eagerly; “yes, she was awfully nice. But Mrs Harrowby spoilt it all. Just when everybody was standing up to go, she came bustling forward—”

“She doesn’t bustle,” interposed Blanche.

“Well, never mind—up she came, and began talking to those Wandle girls and me in a patronising sort of way: ‘Your roads lie in the same direction; you will be going home together, I suppose?’ I stared, and to do them justice,theylooked uncomfortable. ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘I think you do not know me. I came with my sister, Miss Derwent. I have not the—’ Then she interrupted me. ‘You don’t mean to say you have not made friends yet? and such near neighbours!’ And she was on the point, the very point, Blanche, of insisting on our ‘making friends,’ as she called it, when Lady Hebe came up about some books or something, and I managed to get out of the way. That was why I was fidgeting so to get hold of you. Blanchie, Iwon’tbe treated like that. I wish we had never gone to that horrid tea-meeting.”

Blanche looked distressed.

“And yet, Stasy,” she said, “you were the one to want to make friends out of school, so to say, with some of the Blissmore girls—the very same class as those here, some of them actually relations.”

“Not all of the same class,” said Stasy; “some of them are much more ladies, only poor. And, besides, that would have beenquitedifferent, don’t you see, Blanchie? It would have been me, or us, being kind to them—not us being put on a level with them, as that Mrs Harrowby wanted to do. But I don’t think she will try that sort of thing again, with me, at least.”

“How did the girls take what you said?” her sister inquired quietly.

Stasy seemed a little uncomfortable.

“Oh well, you know, it wasn’t pleasant for them either. The dark one—she’s much cleverer and quicker than the pretty, stupid, fair one—the dark one looked very grave, and I think she got a very little red.”

“Poor girl!” said Blanche—and something in her tone made Stasy wince—“I daresay she did.Theydid not deserve to be punished, that I can see.”

“I never said they did, unless—well, if they are to be counted the same as us, they should have tried to be kind and ‘neighbourly.’ How I do detest that word! It is so inconsistent. You seem to think I should have been gushing over with amiability to them, just because they have not even been honestly, vulgarly kind. Not that we wanted anything of the sort, of course. We are completely and entirely independent of them.”

“Yes; and for that very reason you could well have afforded to be simply courteous. You may be pretty sure that if they have not called, it has been that they thought we should not like it; and I don’t say that we are in any way bound to make friends with people whose interests are quite different from ours, and who would have very little in common with us. But it could have done no sort of harm to have spoken pleasantly to them, andevento have walked home together, that I can see.”

Stasy did not reply. She was beginning to feel rather ashamed of herself. Had she behaved “snobbishly?” Her cheeks burned at the thought of having appeared to do so: I fear her first misgiving dealt more with this possible “appearing,” than with the actual wrong or contemptibleness of her feelings. Blanche walked on silently. She was thinking to herself how the same spirit came out in different positions. There was Stasy, now, sixteen-years-old Stasy, showing already the same worldly narrow-mindedness, which, had not Blanche’s own dignity and self-respect been of exceptional quality, might have mortified her not a little when shown to herself by Lady Marth.

“I would not tell Stasy of it at present, on any account,” she thought; “but some day I shall let her know how curiously the two incidents came together, and let her draw her own deductions.”

But she was sorry for Stasy too. She was at all times very tender of her sister’s faults and follies, and intensely sympathising in her troubles. So she exerted herself to disperse the little cloud of mortification which had gathered on Stasy’s face; and when the two entered the library, where their mother was waiting for them, they were both bright and cheerful, and ready to relate to her all the incidents of the afternoon which were likely to interest her.

“Lady Marth was there, you say?” she inquired. “I did not know she was likely to belong to the girls’ guild, or whatever you call it. I don’t know that I should have cared to let you go had I thought she would be there.”

Blanche looked rather surprised.

“Why, mamma, what does it matter? Do you mean because she has not called?”

“Not exactly. But she is the sort of woman who, unless she takes it into her head to be civil to people, can be—very much the reverse. And”—Mrs Derwent’s face hardened a little—“I don’t want you and Stasy, my darlings, to be exposed to that kind of thing. Aunt Grace hinted at something of the kind, and since then I have remembered who Lady Marth is. She belongs to a family of no ancestry, but which has become rapidly prominent through a mixture of cleverness and good luck. They—her people, the Banfleets—are now enormously rich, and pride themselves on their extreme exclusiveness. They areplus royalistes que le roi.”

“How detestable!” said Stasy, “and how contemptible! I am sure I don’t want to know them.”

“You can’t call them really contemptible,” said her mother. “They are a very talented family, in several directions too. And they are very generous and liberal and honourable. But this one weakness—the trying to be just the one thing they are not—spoils them.”

“And, very likely, if theywereof very old descent, they would care less about it,” said Blanche reflectively.

“Perhaps so, but that does not always follow. Sir Conway Marth is a much wider-minded man, but not specially clever. And he is of a very old family. I used to know his sisters. They were thoroughly nice; more like that girl you have taken such a fancy to—his ward, I mean,” said Mrs Derwent. “But we cannot expect to know her in an ordinary way if she lives with the Marths. I wish—” And then she hesitated, while a troubled look crept over her face.

Blanche, who was sitting next her, took her hand and fondled it softly.

“I know what you are going to say, mother dear,” she said, “and you are not to say it. Everything you have done has been for the best, and with the best motives, and you are just not to wish it undone. We have a mass of things to be grateful for and happy about, and why should we worry about things that, through no fault of ours, don’t come in our way.”

“Some of them may come in our way,” said Stasy, whoso versatile spirits had already gone up again. “I shouldn’t wonder if that nice, ugly Miss Milward were to call on us, and ask us to go to see her.—Oh Blanchie, there’s Flopper rushing about over the flower-beds; he really must be tied up, till he sobers down a little.”

“Run out and tie him up, then,” said Blanche, and off Stasy set. Flopper was a new acquisition; a very interesting and aggravating retriever puppy, with all the charms and foibles of puppyhood intensely developed in him. Looking after Flopper was very wholesome for Stasy, her sister had discovered.

Blanche turned again to her mother.

“Mamma dear,” she said, “I really think we must not get into the way of seeing the worst side of things. If we are a little lonely, any way we have each other, and such a charming home. Could any one picture to themselves a sweeter room than this library? How our French friends would admire it!”

“Yes,” said Mrs Derwent, “it is a delightful room. Of course, the name is rather inappropriate, we have so few books.”

“We must get some more,” said Blanche; “by degrees, of course.”

“I fear it must be by degrees,” said her mother; “I cannot afford anything for the house at present, it has cost so much more than I expected. And there seems some little difficulty about our income still; the new partners are asking for longer time to pay us out in, and it will make it difficult to get good investments if the capital is realised so irregularly.”

“I don’t understand about it,” said Blanche. “But it doesn’t matter for the present. When Stasy is grown up, it would be nice to take her about a little; perhaps to London now and then, if by that time we have made some friends there. Mamma, couldn’t we invite some of our old friends to come to stay with us a little—Madame de Caillemont, for instance?”

“She is too frail now, I fear, to come so far,” said Mrs Derwent. “And as for any one else—no, I don’t feel as if I should like it. Do not think me small or childish, Blanchie, but—you know French peoples ideas? They are all already expecting, from one day to another, to hear of your making some grand marriage; they thought a good deal of us as well-connected English people, you know. And, I confess, it would mortify me for them, any of them, to see how—how completely ‘out of it all’ we are.”

“Poor little mother!” said Blanche caressingly, “you really mustn’t get gloomy.Youdon’t think I want to marry and leave you, do you? I can’timaginesuch a thing. I cannot in my wildest dreams picture to myself the going away from you and Stasy! Never mind about that; but I do understand that you would feel rather sore at any friends thinking we were more friendless here than in France. There is no need to invite any one at present. I think I had a vague idea that it might cheer you up a little. This house is so pretty; I should enjoy showing it off.”

“I should like you to have the pleasure of doing so,” said Mrs Derwent wistfully. “You are always so sweet, my Blanchie. I can’t help feeling as if nothing and nobody would be good enough for you; the faintest idea of any one in the very least looking down upon you is—”

“Mother dear, it is not that. These people don’t know us, or anything about us. There is nothing mortifying or worth minding that I can see in people’s ignoring you, when they know nothing about you. And as for rudeness—that always lowers the rude person, not the object of it.”

Mrs Derwent looked up quickly.

“You don’t mean that any one has been actuallyrudeto you, Blanchie? Was there anything this afternoon?”

Blanche hesitated. She was incapable of uttering a word that was not true; yet, again, she was determined to tell her mother nothing of Lady Marth’s impertinence.

“Mamma,” she said, “I am thinking a great deal about Stasy.Shewas rude, at least it was tacitly rude, this afternoon,” and she related the incident we know of.

“It was unladylike and unkind,” said Mrs Derwent. “Yes, I am anxious about Stasy. This uncertain position that we have got into is bad for her in every way.”

“It may all come right,” said Blanche cheerfully. “But I am glad you think I spoke properly to Stasy. Let us hope it will all come right, mamma, ifwedo our best to be kind and good.”

Chapter Twelve.A Sprained Ankle.For a time it seemed as if Blanche’s hopeful prognostications were likely to be fulfilled. The meeting with Lady Hebe at the vicarage led to one or two others, for though Blanche was naturally quick and orderly, it took longer than either she or her new friend had expected to initiate her into work of which the whole idea and details were completely new to her. And the more the two girls saw of each other, the stronger grew the mutual attraction of which both had been conscious since that first evening when they came together in the fog at Victoria Station.But Hebe was powerless to do more. She found it best to avoid all mention even of the Derwents’ name at East Moddersham, so evident was it that Lady Marth had conceived one of her most unreasonable prejudices against the strangers.“It is a good deal thanks to Archie Dunstan,” thought Hebe. “He made Josephine furious that day. It’s really too bad of him, and if I can, I’ll give him a hint about it. Of course, it doesn’t matter tohimwhether people are nice to the poor Derwents or not, but he’s quite worldly wise enough to know that with a woman like Josephine, and, indeed, with all these good ladies here about,hisadvocacy would do them far more harm than good. Why, I’ve known Josephine jealous and angry when he or Norman refused to give up an engagement of long standing, if she chose to want them. She doesn’t think Archie should know any one whom she hasn’t taken up.”She did speak to Archie, and he listened attentively. But at the close of her oration, when his silence was encouraging her to hope that she had made some impression, he entirely discomposed her by inquiring calmly if there were to be any more guild meetings at the vicarage before she went to town, as if so, he would make a point of looking in as he had done the week before.“How can you, Archie?” said Hebe. “The very thing I have been trying. No,” she broke off, “there are to be no more meetings, and if there were, I would not let you know.”“All right,” said Archie; “it doesn’t matter in the least. I’ve little birds in my service who are much more reliable sources of information than your wise ladyship. And one of them has informed me that there is going to be a tea-fight in the garden at Pinnerton Lodge for the damsels who have the honour to belong to the guild. And I mean to be at it.”“Archie?” exclaimed Hebe, stopping short, and looking at him in a sort of despair. “You go too far sometimes in your love of fun and amusing yourself; you do, really. The Derwents are not people to take freedoms with. Just because Blanche—Miss Derwent, I mean—is so charming and lovely, and unlike the common run of girls, you’re much mistaken if you think that you can treat her with less deference than if she—”“If she what?” said Archie.“Than if she—well—belonged to our set, you know. Was quiteineverything.”“How do you know that I’ve not fallen desperately, in love with her?” he inquired coolly, looking Hebe full in the face.“For two reasons,” she replied. “You don’t know what really falling in love means; and secondly, if such a thing had happened, you wouldn’t talk about it like that.”Archie laughed.“All the same,” he said, “I am going to be at the Pinnerton Lodge tea-fight. See if I’m not.”Hebe turned away in indignation. She was fond of Archie, and they were very old friends, almost on brother-and-sister-like terms, but he sometimes made her more nearly angry than was at all usual with her.“How glad I am Norman is not like that!” she said to herself—“turning everything into joke. I wonder if it would be any good to make him speak to Archie, and warn him not to begin any nonsense about Blanche Derwent? No, I am afraid it might lead to disagreeables; Norman would be so vexed with Archie for annoying me.”It was quite true that there was going to be an entertainment for the members of the guild at Pinnerton Lodge. The idea had been started in one of the talks on the affairs of the little society between Lady Hebe and Blanche, and Mrs Derwent had taken it up with the greatest cordiality. She was glad of anything which promised some variety for her daughters, and delighted to be the means of giving pleasure to others. Nor was she sorry to, as it were, assert her position in even so simple a way as this.“I shall be so glad to see your Lady Hebe at last,” she said to Blanche.“I am sure you will like her as much as I do,” said Blanche. “Stasy has promised me,” she went on, “to be very nice indeed to those other girls, to make up for that day at the vicarage.”A few days later the little entertainment came off. It was almost the eve of the East Moddersham family’s leaving for London. Hebe had been staying at Crossburn for a few days, only returning home the morning of the party, on purpose to be present at it. Rosy Milward accompanied her, in order, as she said, to see how things went off, as she had promised an entertainment of the same kind herself to Hebe’s girls a little later in the season.Rosy was a little shy of offering herself as a guest to the Derwents, for she had not succeeded in her endeavours to persuade her grandmother to call at Pinnerton Lodge. Old Mrs Milward was becoming increasingly frail, and even a small effort seemed painful to her. Yet, as is often the case with elderly people in such circumstances, she stood increasingly on her dignity, and would not hear of her grand-daughter “calling for her,” as Rosy ventured to suggest.“We know nothing of these people,” she said, “except that Grace Selwyn knew the mother as a child. But no one else is calling on them, and I really don’t see why we need do so.”“Lady Harriot has called,” said Rosy.“I can’t help that, my dear,” was the reply. “Lady Harriot has no young daughters or grand-daughters, so her calling involves nothing.”“She has anephew,” Rosy said to herself, for she was far too quick not to have noticed Archie Dunstan’s evident admiration of Miss Derwent. But she had the discretion to keep this reflection to herself.And, after all, Mrs Milward made no objection to her grand-daughter’s accompanying Lady Hebe to Pinnerton Lodge on the afternoon in question.“That sort of thing,” she remarked, with some inconsistency, “is quite different. You can go anywhere for a fancy fair or a charity entertainment;” forgetting that her grand-daughter was sure to be specially thrown into the society of the Derwent girls on such an occasion, and little suspecting that Rosy intended to profit to the utmost by such an opportunity of seeing more of both Blanche and Stasy. For Hebe quite reassured her as to the welcome she would receive.“They’re sothoroughlynice, so simply well-bred,” Hebe said, “so pleased to give pleasure. Otherwise, I should have felt almost ashamed to go myself, for it is much more marked for Josephine not to call, than your grandmother—an old lady, and living at some distance.”All went well. The weather was mild, almost warm; there were no threatening rain-clouds or clouds of any kind on the afternoon fixed upon; so, to Stasy’s great delight, it was decided that the tea-tables should be set out in the garden, or rather on the tennis-lawn at one side of the house. Lady Hebe and her friend were the first to arrive, and were full of admiration of the way in which the Derwents had arranged their preparations.“How pretty you have made the tables look!” said Hebe to Mrs Derwent. “It’ll be quite a lesson in itself to the girls. I’m afraid our part of the country is very deficient in taste. We are so dreadfully old-fashioned and conservative.”“But many old-fashioned ways and things are in much better taste than new-fashioned ones,” Mrs Derwent replied. “Good taste seems to come in cycles. I must say there was great room for improvement in such things when I was a girl.”“You lived near here then, did you not?” said Hebe. “Yes, at Fotherley, near Alderwood, you know,” said Mrs Derwent. “I was so happy there, that it made me choose this part of England in preference to any other, when the time came for us to make our home here.”She sighed a little.“It is a very nice part of the world, I do think,” said Hebe. “But I suppose it takes a little time to get to feel at home anywhere. And it must seem very strange to you to come back to the same place after so many years.”“It hardly seems like the same place,” said Mrs Derwent, “but that would not matter, if Blanche and Stasy get to feel at home here.”“I do hope they will,” said Hebe, with such evidently sincere earnestness, that Mrs Derwent’s heart was won on the spot. “If only I had anything in my power”—then she hesitated, and her colour deepened a little—“I may have before long,” she added with a smile. “I mean to say,” she went on, with some slight confusion, “if Miss Derwent cares to have me as a friend, I look forward to being rather more my own mistress than I am just now.”“You are very good,” said Mrs Derwent simply; but at that moment Stasy came dancing over the grass, to say that the guests of the day, “the guild girls,” had begun to arrive, and Lady Hebe was in request to organise the games.“Where is Herty?” said Mrs Derwent suddenly. “I haven’t seen him for ever so long!”“He went off to the wood, to get some more ivy, just after luncheon,” said Blanche. “Yes, he should have been back by now. But you needn’t be uneasy about him, mamma; he’s sure to be all right.”“Still, I wish he would come back,” said Mrs Derwent. “He was looking forward to the fun of helping us with the tea and everything.”The next hour passed very busily—so busily, that, except Mrs Derwent herself, no one gave a thought to Herty’s continued absence, and even she forgot it from time to time. But when the games had ceased for the moment, and everybody was no less busily but more quietly occupied at the tea-tables, the thought of Herty returned to Blanche’s mind, as well as to her mother’s.“What can he be about?” she said to herself. “I don’t want to frighten mamma, but I really think we must send some one to look for him.”She glanced round, and, thinking she would not be missed for a moment, she hastened across the lawn towards a side gate, whence they generally made their way into the woods by a short cut. There she stood listening, hoping to hear the little boys whistle, or the sound of his footsteps hurrying over the dry ground. But all was silent, save that now and then there came the distant clatter of teacups mingled with cheerful voices, and now and then a merry laugh.“They won’t hear me,” thought Blanche, “if I call. And possibly Herty may, if he’s still in the woods.”So she called clearly, and as loudly as she could: “Herty, Herty! where are you? Her-ty, Her-ty!” No reply.Blanche waited a moment or two, and then tried again. This time she thought she heard something like a far-off whistle. It was a peculiarly still afternoon, and sound carried far. Soon, to her listening ears, came the consciousness of approaching steps, firm and decided, not the light footfall of a child like Herty. Blanche still lingered.“It may be some one coming through the wood, who has seen him,” she thought; “at least I can ask.” Another moment, and the new-comer was in sight. But—Blanche had good eyesight—but for some seconds the figure approaching her set her perception at defiance. What, who was it? An old man with humped-up shoulders? A woodcutter carrying a load? No, it was not an old man—it moved too vigorously; nor was it a peasant—the step was too easy and well-balanced. And the load on its shoulders—a moment or two more, and it all took shape. The stranger was a young man, and—yes, undoubtedly, agentleman, and he was carrying a child!Then Blanche’s heart leaped into her mouth, as the saying goes, with horror. The child was a little boy, and—yes, it was Herty. What, oh! what had happened to him?She gave no thought to the person who was carrying him; she was over the stile by the gate in half a second, and rushing in frantic haste along the path, towards her little brother and his bearer.“Herty, darling!” she exclaimed. “Whatisthe matter? Have you hurt yourself?” And then, as the child did not at once reply—“Has he fainted?” she went on. “Oh, do speak!”“Don’t make such a fuss, Blanchie,” came in Herty’s familiar, high-pitched voice, sweet as music to his sister’s ears, despite his ingratitude. “Please put me down,” he went on, to the person who was carrying him; “I’m sure I can walk now. I don’t like to look like a baby.”“I’m sure you can’t walk, my little man,” was the reply. “But you may try for yourself if you like,” and the person he addressed carefully lowered the child to the ground, while Blanche, for the first time turning her attention to him, recognised in Herty’s bearer the young man she had met twice before—at Alderwood, and since then at Pinnerton Vicarage, and who had been introduced to her as Mr Archibald Dunstan.“I beg your pardon,” he said, lifting his cap as soon as his hand was free. “I’m afraid we’ve given you a fright, but—”“Iwasfrightened for a moment,” said Blanche, half apologetically, “but now I must thank you. Has Herty hurt himself? Where did you find him?”Mr Dunstan did not at once reply; he was looking at the child, who had grown very white, and nearly fell.“There now,” he said. “It’s all very well to be plucky, but I told you you couldn’t manage for yourself,” and he put his arm round the little fellow.—“Don’t be alarmed, Miss Derwent,” he went on; “it’s only slight, I think—a sprained ankle; but the pain would be worse if it were bad. He was chatting quite cheerfully as we came along just now. I think the best thing to be done is for me to carry him home, if you’ll allow me to do so.”“Thank you, oh thank you so much,” said Blanche. “Our house is just on the other side of the gate. I will run on and open it. We are rather busy this afternoon—Lady Hebe’s girls are having tea in the garden, and I shouldn’t like my mother to be frightened. So perhaps if you can carry Herty straight to the house, that would be the best.”“Certainly,” said Mr Dunstan, passing through the gate as she held it open. “Itisunlucky that this should have happened when you’re all so busy.”But his tone was remarkably cheerful in spite of his expressions of sympathy. And Herty, now comfortably ensconsed again on the young man’s shoulder, began his explanations.“I was stretching up for a splendid spray of ivy,” he said. “There was a sort of ditch, and I lost my balance and rolled in. And when I tried to get up, my foot hurt me so, I couldn’t stand. So I had to lie down, but I shouted a lot. And at last, after ever so long,hecame.—Wouldn’t it have been dreadful if you hadn’t?” he went on, patting Mr Dunstan affectionately: he had evidently taken a great fancy to his rescuer. “Do you think I’d have had to stay there all night?”“Itwaslucky, indeed,” said Blanche. “There is a short cut through the woods from Alderwood to East Moddersham, isn’t there? You live at Alderwood, do you not? I suppose you were going to East Moddersham. You can go back the other way round if you like.”She spoke quite simply, a little faster perhaps than was usual with her, thanks to her late excitement and present relief. But there was no sort of curiosity orarrière penséein her questions.What then—or was it her fancy?—what made the young man’s colour deepen slightly as she put them to him? She wasalmostsure it was so, though he was rather sunburnt, which made it more difficult to judge.“Thank you,” he said. “Yes, I was bound for East Moddersham. That is to say, not exactly—but—I promised to see Lady Hebe this afternoon,” and as he looked up with the last words, Blanche caught a twinkle of fun in his eyes.They were very nice eyes—honest grey eyes; she had not noticed them before. And after glancing at them, she turned her own away in some perplexity.“Lady Hebe is here,” she said. “I don’t think she can be expecting you. It has been settled for some time that she was to come.”“Ah then, perhaps you—Mrs Derwent, that is to say—will allow me to speak to her—Lady Hebe—in your garden. That will save my needing to go to East Moddersham. Sir Conway is away, and my calls on Lady Marth are never pressing.”“He is rather queer,” thought Blanche. “I know he and Lady Hebe are very old friends, but I really don’t think she is expecting him this afternoon.”Mr Dunstan, however, seemed quite satisfied. He spoke cheerfully to Herty, asking him if his foot pained him still, and assuring him that it would soon be all right again.“Shall I have to have the doctor?” asked the boy. “I don’t like doctors. The old one at home made me stay in bed when it wassohot. I am sure it made me much iller.”“Oh, our doctors here aren’t like that,” said Archie. “They’re very jolly fellows. But perhaps you won’t need one. I’ll have a look at your ankle if your sister will allow me. I’m a bit of a doctor myself.”Blanche did not speak.“Blanchie, don’t you hear?” said Herty, with a touch of querulousness. “It would be much nicer not to have a proper doctor.”“Very well, dear, we’ll see,” she replied tranquilly. “Mr Dunstan is very kind.”

For a time it seemed as if Blanche’s hopeful prognostications were likely to be fulfilled. The meeting with Lady Hebe at the vicarage led to one or two others, for though Blanche was naturally quick and orderly, it took longer than either she or her new friend had expected to initiate her into work of which the whole idea and details were completely new to her. And the more the two girls saw of each other, the stronger grew the mutual attraction of which both had been conscious since that first evening when they came together in the fog at Victoria Station.

But Hebe was powerless to do more. She found it best to avoid all mention even of the Derwents’ name at East Moddersham, so evident was it that Lady Marth had conceived one of her most unreasonable prejudices against the strangers.

“It is a good deal thanks to Archie Dunstan,” thought Hebe. “He made Josephine furious that day. It’s really too bad of him, and if I can, I’ll give him a hint about it. Of course, it doesn’t matter tohimwhether people are nice to the poor Derwents or not, but he’s quite worldly wise enough to know that with a woman like Josephine, and, indeed, with all these good ladies here about,hisadvocacy would do them far more harm than good. Why, I’ve known Josephine jealous and angry when he or Norman refused to give up an engagement of long standing, if she chose to want them. She doesn’t think Archie should know any one whom she hasn’t taken up.”

She did speak to Archie, and he listened attentively. But at the close of her oration, when his silence was encouraging her to hope that she had made some impression, he entirely discomposed her by inquiring calmly if there were to be any more guild meetings at the vicarage before she went to town, as if so, he would make a point of looking in as he had done the week before.

“How can you, Archie?” said Hebe. “The very thing I have been trying. No,” she broke off, “there are to be no more meetings, and if there were, I would not let you know.”

“All right,” said Archie; “it doesn’t matter in the least. I’ve little birds in my service who are much more reliable sources of information than your wise ladyship. And one of them has informed me that there is going to be a tea-fight in the garden at Pinnerton Lodge for the damsels who have the honour to belong to the guild. And I mean to be at it.”

“Archie?” exclaimed Hebe, stopping short, and looking at him in a sort of despair. “You go too far sometimes in your love of fun and amusing yourself; you do, really. The Derwents are not people to take freedoms with. Just because Blanche—Miss Derwent, I mean—is so charming and lovely, and unlike the common run of girls, you’re much mistaken if you think that you can treat her with less deference than if she—”

“If she what?” said Archie.

“Than if she—well—belonged to our set, you know. Was quiteineverything.”

“How do you know that I’ve not fallen desperately, in love with her?” he inquired coolly, looking Hebe full in the face.

“For two reasons,” she replied. “You don’t know what really falling in love means; and secondly, if such a thing had happened, you wouldn’t talk about it like that.”

Archie laughed.

“All the same,” he said, “I am going to be at the Pinnerton Lodge tea-fight. See if I’m not.”

Hebe turned away in indignation. She was fond of Archie, and they were very old friends, almost on brother-and-sister-like terms, but he sometimes made her more nearly angry than was at all usual with her.

“How glad I am Norman is not like that!” she said to herself—“turning everything into joke. I wonder if it would be any good to make him speak to Archie, and warn him not to begin any nonsense about Blanche Derwent? No, I am afraid it might lead to disagreeables; Norman would be so vexed with Archie for annoying me.”

It was quite true that there was going to be an entertainment for the members of the guild at Pinnerton Lodge. The idea had been started in one of the talks on the affairs of the little society between Lady Hebe and Blanche, and Mrs Derwent had taken it up with the greatest cordiality. She was glad of anything which promised some variety for her daughters, and delighted to be the means of giving pleasure to others. Nor was she sorry to, as it were, assert her position in even so simple a way as this.

“I shall be so glad to see your Lady Hebe at last,” she said to Blanche.

“I am sure you will like her as much as I do,” said Blanche. “Stasy has promised me,” she went on, “to be very nice indeed to those other girls, to make up for that day at the vicarage.”

A few days later the little entertainment came off. It was almost the eve of the East Moddersham family’s leaving for London. Hebe had been staying at Crossburn for a few days, only returning home the morning of the party, on purpose to be present at it. Rosy Milward accompanied her, in order, as she said, to see how things went off, as she had promised an entertainment of the same kind herself to Hebe’s girls a little later in the season.

Rosy was a little shy of offering herself as a guest to the Derwents, for she had not succeeded in her endeavours to persuade her grandmother to call at Pinnerton Lodge. Old Mrs Milward was becoming increasingly frail, and even a small effort seemed painful to her. Yet, as is often the case with elderly people in such circumstances, she stood increasingly on her dignity, and would not hear of her grand-daughter “calling for her,” as Rosy ventured to suggest.

“We know nothing of these people,” she said, “except that Grace Selwyn knew the mother as a child. But no one else is calling on them, and I really don’t see why we need do so.”

“Lady Harriot has called,” said Rosy.

“I can’t help that, my dear,” was the reply. “Lady Harriot has no young daughters or grand-daughters, so her calling involves nothing.”

“She has anephew,” Rosy said to herself, for she was far too quick not to have noticed Archie Dunstan’s evident admiration of Miss Derwent. But she had the discretion to keep this reflection to herself.

And, after all, Mrs Milward made no objection to her grand-daughter’s accompanying Lady Hebe to Pinnerton Lodge on the afternoon in question.

“That sort of thing,” she remarked, with some inconsistency, “is quite different. You can go anywhere for a fancy fair or a charity entertainment;” forgetting that her grand-daughter was sure to be specially thrown into the society of the Derwent girls on such an occasion, and little suspecting that Rosy intended to profit to the utmost by such an opportunity of seeing more of both Blanche and Stasy. For Hebe quite reassured her as to the welcome she would receive.

“They’re sothoroughlynice, so simply well-bred,” Hebe said, “so pleased to give pleasure. Otherwise, I should have felt almost ashamed to go myself, for it is much more marked for Josephine not to call, than your grandmother—an old lady, and living at some distance.”

All went well. The weather was mild, almost warm; there were no threatening rain-clouds or clouds of any kind on the afternoon fixed upon; so, to Stasy’s great delight, it was decided that the tea-tables should be set out in the garden, or rather on the tennis-lawn at one side of the house. Lady Hebe and her friend were the first to arrive, and were full of admiration of the way in which the Derwents had arranged their preparations.

“How pretty you have made the tables look!” said Hebe to Mrs Derwent. “It’ll be quite a lesson in itself to the girls. I’m afraid our part of the country is very deficient in taste. We are so dreadfully old-fashioned and conservative.”

“But many old-fashioned ways and things are in much better taste than new-fashioned ones,” Mrs Derwent replied. “Good taste seems to come in cycles. I must say there was great room for improvement in such things when I was a girl.”

“You lived near here then, did you not?” said Hebe. “Yes, at Fotherley, near Alderwood, you know,” said Mrs Derwent. “I was so happy there, that it made me choose this part of England in preference to any other, when the time came for us to make our home here.”

She sighed a little.

“It is a very nice part of the world, I do think,” said Hebe. “But I suppose it takes a little time to get to feel at home anywhere. And it must seem very strange to you to come back to the same place after so many years.”

“It hardly seems like the same place,” said Mrs Derwent, “but that would not matter, if Blanche and Stasy get to feel at home here.”

“I do hope they will,” said Hebe, with such evidently sincere earnestness, that Mrs Derwent’s heart was won on the spot. “If only I had anything in my power”—then she hesitated, and her colour deepened a little—“I may have before long,” she added with a smile. “I mean to say,” she went on, with some slight confusion, “if Miss Derwent cares to have me as a friend, I look forward to being rather more my own mistress than I am just now.”

“You are very good,” said Mrs Derwent simply; but at that moment Stasy came dancing over the grass, to say that the guests of the day, “the guild girls,” had begun to arrive, and Lady Hebe was in request to organise the games.

“Where is Herty?” said Mrs Derwent suddenly. “I haven’t seen him for ever so long!”

“He went off to the wood, to get some more ivy, just after luncheon,” said Blanche. “Yes, he should have been back by now. But you needn’t be uneasy about him, mamma; he’s sure to be all right.”

“Still, I wish he would come back,” said Mrs Derwent. “He was looking forward to the fun of helping us with the tea and everything.”

The next hour passed very busily—so busily, that, except Mrs Derwent herself, no one gave a thought to Herty’s continued absence, and even she forgot it from time to time. But when the games had ceased for the moment, and everybody was no less busily but more quietly occupied at the tea-tables, the thought of Herty returned to Blanche’s mind, as well as to her mother’s.

“What can he be about?” she said to herself. “I don’t want to frighten mamma, but I really think we must send some one to look for him.”

She glanced round, and, thinking she would not be missed for a moment, she hastened across the lawn towards a side gate, whence they generally made their way into the woods by a short cut. There she stood listening, hoping to hear the little boys whistle, or the sound of his footsteps hurrying over the dry ground. But all was silent, save that now and then there came the distant clatter of teacups mingled with cheerful voices, and now and then a merry laugh.

“They won’t hear me,” thought Blanche, “if I call. And possibly Herty may, if he’s still in the woods.”

So she called clearly, and as loudly as she could: “Herty, Herty! where are you? Her-ty, Her-ty!” No reply.

Blanche waited a moment or two, and then tried again. This time she thought she heard something like a far-off whistle. It was a peculiarly still afternoon, and sound carried far. Soon, to her listening ears, came the consciousness of approaching steps, firm and decided, not the light footfall of a child like Herty. Blanche still lingered.

“It may be some one coming through the wood, who has seen him,” she thought; “at least I can ask.” Another moment, and the new-comer was in sight. But—Blanche had good eyesight—but for some seconds the figure approaching her set her perception at defiance. What, who was it? An old man with humped-up shoulders? A woodcutter carrying a load? No, it was not an old man—it moved too vigorously; nor was it a peasant—the step was too easy and well-balanced. And the load on its shoulders—a moment or two more, and it all took shape. The stranger was a young man, and—yes, undoubtedly, agentleman, and he was carrying a child!

Then Blanche’s heart leaped into her mouth, as the saying goes, with horror. The child was a little boy, and—yes, it was Herty. What, oh! what had happened to him?

She gave no thought to the person who was carrying him; she was over the stile by the gate in half a second, and rushing in frantic haste along the path, towards her little brother and his bearer.

“Herty, darling!” she exclaimed. “Whatisthe matter? Have you hurt yourself?” And then, as the child did not at once reply—“Has he fainted?” she went on. “Oh, do speak!”

“Don’t make such a fuss, Blanchie,” came in Herty’s familiar, high-pitched voice, sweet as music to his sister’s ears, despite his ingratitude. “Please put me down,” he went on, to the person who was carrying him; “I’m sure I can walk now. I don’t like to look like a baby.”

“I’m sure you can’t walk, my little man,” was the reply. “But you may try for yourself if you like,” and the person he addressed carefully lowered the child to the ground, while Blanche, for the first time turning her attention to him, recognised in Herty’s bearer the young man she had met twice before—at Alderwood, and since then at Pinnerton Vicarage, and who had been introduced to her as Mr Archibald Dunstan.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, lifting his cap as soon as his hand was free. “I’m afraid we’ve given you a fright, but—”

“Iwasfrightened for a moment,” said Blanche, half apologetically, “but now I must thank you. Has Herty hurt himself? Where did you find him?”

Mr Dunstan did not at once reply; he was looking at the child, who had grown very white, and nearly fell.

“There now,” he said. “It’s all very well to be plucky, but I told you you couldn’t manage for yourself,” and he put his arm round the little fellow.—“Don’t be alarmed, Miss Derwent,” he went on; “it’s only slight, I think—a sprained ankle; but the pain would be worse if it were bad. He was chatting quite cheerfully as we came along just now. I think the best thing to be done is for me to carry him home, if you’ll allow me to do so.”

“Thank you, oh thank you so much,” said Blanche. “Our house is just on the other side of the gate. I will run on and open it. We are rather busy this afternoon—Lady Hebe’s girls are having tea in the garden, and I shouldn’t like my mother to be frightened. So perhaps if you can carry Herty straight to the house, that would be the best.”

“Certainly,” said Mr Dunstan, passing through the gate as she held it open. “Itisunlucky that this should have happened when you’re all so busy.”

But his tone was remarkably cheerful in spite of his expressions of sympathy. And Herty, now comfortably ensconsed again on the young man’s shoulder, began his explanations.

“I was stretching up for a splendid spray of ivy,” he said. “There was a sort of ditch, and I lost my balance and rolled in. And when I tried to get up, my foot hurt me so, I couldn’t stand. So I had to lie down, but I shouted a lot. And at last, after ever so long,hecame.—Wouldn’t it have been dreadful if you hadn’t?” he went on, patting Mr Dunstan affectionately: he had evidently taken a great fancy to his rescuer. “Do you think I’d have had to stay there all night?”

“Itwaslucky, indeed,” said Blanche. “There is a short cut through the woods from Alderwood to East Moddersham, isn’t there? You live at Alderwood, do you not? I suppose you were going to East Moddersham. You can go back the other way round if you like.”

She spoke quite simply, a little faster perhaps than was usual with her, thanks to her late excitement and present relief. But there was no sort of curiosity orarrière penséein her questions.

What then—or was it her fancy?—what made the young man’s colour deepen slightly as she put them to him? She wasalmostsure it was so, though he was rather sunburnt, which made it more difficult to judge.

“Thank you,” he said. “Yes, I was bound for East Moddersham. That is to say, not exactly—but—I promised to see Lady Hebe this afternoon,” and as he looked up with the last words, Blanche caught a twinkle of fun in his eyes.

They were very nice eyes—honest grey eyes; she had not noticed them before. And after glancing at them, she turned her own away in some perplexity.

“Lady Hebe is here,” she said. “I don’t think she can be expecting you. It has been settled for some time that she was to come.”

“Ah then, perhaps you—Mrs Derwent, that is to say—will allow me to speak to her—Lady Hebe—in your garden. That will save my needing to go to East Moddersham. Sir Conway is away, and my calls on Lady Marth are never pressing.”

“He is rather queer,” thought Blanche. “I know he and Lady Hebe are very old friends, but I really don’t think she is expecting him this afternoon.”

Mr Dunstan, however, seemed quite satisfied. He spoke cheerfully to Herty, asking him if his foot pained him still, and assuring him that it would soon be all right again.

“Shall I have to have the doctor?” asked the boy. “I don’t like doctors. The old one at home made me stay in bed when it wassohot. I am sure it made me much iller.”

“Oh, our doctors here aren’t like that,” said Archie. “They’re very jolly fellows. But perhaps you won’t need one. I’ll have a look at your ankle if your sister will allow me. I’m a bit of a doctor myself.”

Blanche did not speak.

“Blanchie, don’t you hear?” said Herty, with a touch of querulousness. “It would be much nicer not to have a proper doctor.”

“Very well, dear, we’ll see,” she replied tranquilly. “Mr Dunstan is very kind.”

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