ed
about Blent, and she chose to maintain it now that she was at last to
see Blent. Probably her father's family instinct had driven her into an
insincere opposition; or she did not consider it dignified to show
interest in relatives who had shown none in her. She had never been
asked to Blent. If she was asked now it was as a duty; as a duty she
would go. Harry did not monopolize the Tristram blood or the Tristram
pride. But this attitude was not very comprehensible to her present
companion. As a personal taste, Mr Sloyd would have liked to be
connected, however remotely, with the aristocracy, and, if he had been,
would have let his social circle hear a good deal about it; even a
business connection was something, and suffered no loss of importance in
his practised hands.

Yet in her heart she was on fire with an excitement which Sloyd would
have wondered at, and which made her father's fussy nervousness seem
absurd. At last she was to see with her eyes the things she had always
heard of. She was to see Blent. Addie Tristram indeed she could no
longer see; that had always been denied to her, and the loss was
irreparable. But even the dead Lady Tristram she would soon be able to
realize far better than she had yet done; she would put her into her
surroundings. And Harry would be there, the cousin who had never been
cousinly, the young man whom she did not know and who was a factor of
such importance in her life. She had dreams in abundance about the
expedition; and it was in vain that reason said "It'll be all over in
three days. Then back to the little house and the need for that
advertisement!" Luckily, this sort of suggestion, made by reason, never
sounds probable, however well reason proves to us that it must come to
pass. Cecily was sure that at last--ah, at last!--a change in life had
come. Life had been always so very much the same; changes generally need
money, and money had not been hers. Knowledge usually needs money too,
and of the kinds of life outside her own narrow sphere she was very
ignorant. Beautiful things also need money; of them she had seen and
enjoyed very little; only the parodies came to the small house in the
small road. All these things joined to make her feel that a great moment
was at hand; she might and did deride herself, but the feeling was
there, and at last she admitted it to her father when she said with a
little laugh:

"I don't suppose anybody ever was so excited over a funeral bef