heard
that you are--shall I say it?--_eperdue_."

Anne, in spite of her calm good sense, was actually provoked to a retort
in kind, and felt terribly vexed with herself for it afterwards. "A
rumour of the same sort has been breathed as to the Lady Maude Kirton's
regard for Lord Hartledon."

"Has it?" returned Lady Maude, with a cool tone and a glowing face. "You
are angry with me without reason. Have I not offered to swear to you an
eternal friendship?"

Anne shook her head, and her lips parted with a curious expression. "I do
not swear so lightly, Lady Maude."

"What if I were to avow to you that it is true?--that I do love Lord
Hartledon, deeply as it is known you love his brother," she added,
dropping her voice--"would you believe me?"

Anne looked at the speaker's face, but could read nothing. Was she in
jest or earnest?

"No, I would not believe you," she said, with a smile. "If you did love
him, you would not proclaim it."

"Exactly. I was jesting. What is Lord Hartledon to me?--save that we are
cousins, and passably good friends. I must avow one thing, that I like
him better than I do his brother."

"For that no avowal is necessary," said Anne; "the fact is sufficiently
evident."

"You are right, Anne;" and for once Maude spoke earnestly. "I do _not_
like Percival Elster. But I will always be civil to him for your sweet
sake."

"Why do you dislike him?--if I may ask it. Have you any particular reason
for doing so?"

"I have no reason in the world. He is a good-natured, gentlemanly fellow;
and I know no ill of him, except that he is always getting into scrapes,
and dropping, as I hear, a lot of money. But if he got out of his last
guinea, and went almost in rags, it would be nothing to me; so _that's_
not it. One does take antipathies; I dare say you do, Miss Ashton. What a
blessing Hartledon did not die in that fever he caught last year! Val
would have inherited. What a mercy!"

"That he lived? or that Val is not Lord Hartledon?"

"Both. But I believe I meant that Val is not reigning."

"You think he would not have made a worthy inheritor?"

"A worthy inheritor? Oh, I was not glancing at that phase of the
question. Here he comes! I will give up my seat to him."

It is possible Lady Maude expected some pretty phrases of affection;
begging her to keep it. If so, she was mistaken. Anne Ashton was one of
those essentially quiet, self-possessed girls in society, whose manners
seem almost to borde