hook them cordially,
while Mrs. Boncassen bursting into tears insisted on kissing him.

"Indeed she is a happy girl," said she; "but I hope Isabel won't be
carried away too high and mighty."

CHAPTER LXXII

Carlton Terrace

Three days after this it was arranged that Isabel should be taken to
Carlton Terrace to be accepted there into the full good graces of
her future father-in-law, and to go through the pleasant ceremony
of seeing the house in which it was to be her destiny to live as
mistress. What can be more interesting to a girl than this first
visit to her future home? And now Isabel Boncassen was to make her
first visit to the house in Carlton Terrace, which the Duke had
already declared his purpose of surrendering to the young couple. She
was going among very grand things,--so grand that those whose affairs
in life are less magnificent may think that her mind should have
soared altogether above chairs and tables, and reposed itself among
diamonds, gold and silver ornaments, rich necklaces, the old masters,
and alabaster statuary. But Dukes and Duchesses must sit upon
chairs,--or at any rate on sofas,--as well as their poorer brethren,
and probably have the same regard for their comfort. Isabel was not
above her future furniture, or the rooms that were to be her rooms,
or the stairs which she would have to tread, or the pillow on which
her head must rest. She had never yet seen even the outside of the
house in which she was to live, and was now prepared to make her
visit with as much enthusiasm as though her future abode was to be
prepared for her in a small house in a small street beyond Islington.

But the Duke was no doubt more than the house, the father-in-law
more than the tables. Isabel, in the ordinary way of society, he had
already known almost with intimacy. She, the while, had been well
aware that if all things could possibly be made to run smoothly with
her, this lordly host, who was so pleasantly courteous to her, would
become her father-in-law. But she had known also that he, in his
courtesy, had been altogether unaware of any such intention on her
part, and that she would now present herself to him in an aspect very
different from that in which she had hitherto been regarded. She
was well aware that the Duke had not wished to take her into his
family,--would not himself have chosen her for his son's wife. She
had seen enough to make her sure that he had even chosen another
bride for hi