with a few new ones," chuckled my lord; and as there was no more to be
extracted from him but foolish old jokes and dreadful smiles, I
contrived to free my "pretty little hand," and sit down demurely by
Tanty's side like the modest retiring young female I should be.

But my blood was dancing in my veins--the blood of Murthering
Moll--doddering old idiot as he is, Lord Manningham is right for once,
I mean to take quite as much out of life as she did. That indeed is
worth being young and beautiful for! We know nothing of our family,
save that both father and mother were killed in Vendee. Tanty never
will tell us anything about them (except their coats of arms), and I
am afraid even to start the subject, for she always branches off upon
heraldry and then we are in for hours of it. But after Lord Manningham
was gone I asked her when and how my grandmother died.

"She died when your mother was born, my dear," said Tanty, "she was
not as old as you are now, and your grandfather never smiled again, or
so they said."

That sobered me a little. Yet she lived her life so well, while she
did live, that I who have wasted twenty precious years can find in my
heart rather to envy than to pity my beautiful grandmother.

* * * * *

_November 5th._--It is _three o'clock in the morning_, but I do not
feel at all inclined to go to bed. Madeleine is sleeping, poor pretty
pale Madeleine! with the tears hardly dry upon her cheeks and I can
hear her sighing in her sleep.

I was right, she is in love, and the gentleman she loves is not
approved of by Tanty and the upshot of it all is we are to leave dear
Bath, delightful Bath, to-morrow--to-day rather--for some unknown
penitential region which our stern relative as yet declines to name. I
am longing to hear more about it; but Tanty, who, though she talks so
much, can keep her own counsel better than any woman I know, will not
give me any further information beyond the facts that the delinquent
who has dared to aspire to my sister is a person of _the name of
Smith_, and that it would not do at all.

I have not the heart to wake Madeleine to make her tell me more, though
I really ought to pinch her well for being so secretive--besides, my
head is so full of my own day that I want to get it all written down,
and I shall never have done so unless I begin at the beginning.

Yesterday, then, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon Lord Dereham's coach
and four came cl