Lord Silverbridge."

Then Miss Cassewary spoke her opinion very plainly. "If Lord
Silverbridge had nobody worse about him than Mr. Tregear he would not
come to much harm."

"I suppose he's not very well off."

"No;--certainly not. He will have a property of some kind, I believe,
when his mother dies. I think very well of Mr. Tregear;--only I wish
that he had a profession. But why are you asking about him, Lady
Cantrip?"

"Nidderdale was talking to me about him and saying that he was
so much with Lord Silverbridge. Lord Silverbridge is going into
Parliament now, and, as it were, beginning the world, and it would
be a thousand pities that he should get into bad hands." It may,
however, be doubted whether Miss Cassewary was hoodwinked by this
little story.

Early in the second week in May the Duke brought his daughter up to
The Horns, and at the same time expressed his intention of remaining
in London. When he did so Lady Mary at once asked whether she might
not be with him,--but he would not permit it. The house in London
would, he said, be more gloomy even than Matching.

"I am quite ashamed of giving you so much trouble," Lady Mary said to
her new friend.

"We are delighted to have you, my dear."

"But I know that you have been obliged to leave London because I am
with you."

"There is nothing I like so much as this place, which your father has
been kind enough to lend us. As for London, there is nothing now to
make me like being there. Both my girls are married, and therefore I
regard myself as an old woman who has done her work. Don't you think
this place very much nicer than London at this time of the year?"

"I don't know London at all. I had only just been brought out when
poor mamma went abroad."

The life they led was very quiet, and must probably have been felt
to be dull by Lady Cantrip, in spite of her old age and desire
for retirement. But the place itself was very lovely. May of all
the months of the year is in England the most insidious, the most
dangerous, and the most inclement. A greatcoat cannot be endured,
and without a greatcoat who can endure a May wind and live? But of
all months it is the prettiest. The grasses are then the greenest,
and the young foliage of the trees, while it has all the glory and
all the colour of spring vegetation, does not hide the form of the
branches as do the heavy masses of the larger leaves which come in
the advancing summer. And of all villas near London