And then we heard of
you as being with Lady Ball, and for some reason, which I don't quite
understand, it has always been supposed that Lady Ball and I were not
to know each other. And now I have heard this wonderful story about
your fortune, and about everything else, too, my dear; and it seems
all very beautiful, and very romantic; and everybody says that you
have behaved so well; and so, to make a long story short, I have come
to find you out in your hermitage, and to claim cousinship, and all
that sort of thing."

"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, Mrs Mackenzie--"

"Don't say it in that way, my dear, or else you'll make me think you
mean to turn a cold shoulder on me for not coming to you before."

"Oh, no."

"But we've only just come to town; and though of course I heard the
story down in Scotland--"

"Did you?"

"Did I? Why, everybody is talking about it, and the newspapers have
been full of it."

"Oh, Mrs Mackenzie, that is so terrible."

"But nobody has said a word against you. Even that stupid clergyman,
who calls you the lamb, has not pretended to say that you were
his lamb. We had the whole story of the Lion and the Lamb in the
_Inverary Interpreter_, but I had no idea that it was you, then. But
the long and the short of it is, that my husband says he must know
his cousin; and to tell the truth, it was he that sent me; and we
want you to come and stay with us in Cavendish Square till the
lawsuit is over, and everything is settled."

Margaret was so startled by the proposition, that she did not know
how to answer it. Of course she was at first impressed with a strong
idea of the impossibility of her complying with such a request,
and was simply anxious to find some proper way of refusing it. The
Incharrow Mackenzies were great people who saw much company, and it
was, she thought, quite out of the question that she should go to
their house. At no time of her career would she have been, as she
conceived, fit to live with such grand persons; but at the present
moment, when she grudged herself even a new pair of gloves out of
the money remaining to her, while she was still looking forward to
a future life passed as a nurse in a hospital, she felt that there
would be an absolute unfitness in such a visit.

"You are very kind," she said at last with faltering voice, as she
meditated in what words she might best convey her refusal.

"No, I'm not a bit kind; and I know from the tone of your voice