dy Mary, and he will get to the beautiful
city at last."

"What is the beautiful city?" he asked.

"A seat in the Cabinet, I suppose,--or that general respect which a
young nobleman achieves when he has shown himself able to sit on a
bench for six consecutive hours without appearing to go to sleep."

Then they went to lunch, and Lady Mary did find herself to be happy
with her new acquaintance. Her life since her mother's death had
been so sad, that this short escape from it was a relief to her.
Now for awhile she found herself almost gay. There was an easy
liveliness about Lady Mabel,--a grain of humour and playfulness
conjoined,--which made her feel at home at once. And it seemed to her
as though her brother was at home. He called the girl Lady Mab, and
Queen Mab, and once plain Mabel, and the old woman he called Miss
Cass. It surely, she thought, must be the case that Lady Mabel and
her brother were engaged.

"Come upstairs into my own room,--it is nicer than this," said Lady
Mabel, and they went from the dining-room into a pretty little
sitting-room with which Silverbridge was very well acquainted. "Have
you heard of Miss Boncassen?" Mary said she had heard something of
Miss Boncassen's great beauty. "Everybody is talking about her. Your
brother met her at Mrs. Montacute Jones's garden-party, and was made
a conquest of instantly."

"I wasn't made a conquest of at all," said Silverbridge.

"Then he ought to have been made a conquest of. I should be if I were
a man. I think she is the loveliest person to look at and the nicest
person to listen to that I ever came across. We all feel that, as far
as this season is concerned, we are cut out. But we don't mind it so
much because she is a foreigner." Then just as she said this the door
was opened and Frank Tregear was announced.

Everybody there present knew as well as does the reader, what was the
connexion between Tregear and Lady Mary Palliser. And each knew that
the other knew it. It was therefore impossible for them not to feel
themselves guilty among themselves. The two lovers had not seen each
other since they had been together in Italy. Now they were brought
face to face in this unexpected manner! And nobody except Tregear
was at first quite sure whether somebody had not done something to
arrange the meeting. Mary might naturally suspect that Lady Mabel had
done this in the interest of her friend Tregear, and Silverbridge
could not but suspect that it was