within its walls.

No sooner had the old wet blanket disappeared than the two young women,
in the exuberance of their high spirits, took possession of Squire John,
and, singing and dancing, marched him up the stone staircase again into
the castle. Squire John himself was in the best of humours; his face
beamed, he laughed aloud, and he thought to himself what a fine thing it
would have been if both these young women were his daughters and called
him father.

The ancient rooms resounded with the hubbub and innocent frolics of
these two merry young dames. It had been a long long time since those
walls had rung with such a sound as that.

CHAPTER XI.

THE FEMALE FRIEND.

Lady Szentirmay gained her object. Her week's residence at Karpathy
Castle had completely changed Fanny's position in the eyes of the great
world. Even the most prejudiced became more favourably disposed towards
the woman whom Lady Szentirmay freely admitted to her friendship. The
proudest dowagers, who hitherto considered that they would be showing
infinite condescension if they appeared at a festival where a
_ci-devant_ shopkeeper's daughter would play the part of mistress of the
house, now began to think that their condescension might bear a little
paring down. Rigorously virtuous ladies, who had doubted within
themselves whether it were befitting to bring their youthful daughters
to thread the labyrinths full of Eleusianian mysteries at Karpathy
Castle, now ordered their dresses from the dressmakers without the
slightest apprehension. The appearance of Lady Szentirmay was the surest
guarantee of virtue and propriety. The mere fact that Fanny _had_ gained
Flora's friendship made her own domestics regard her with quite
different eyes, and even Squire John himself began to understand what
sort of a wife he had won; and so the nimbus of gentility began to shine
around her.

The whole day the two ladies might have been seen together, engaged in
their great and difficult labours. No smiling, please! The work was
really great and difficult. It is easy enough for us men-folk to say, "I
will give a great dinner-party to-morrow, or a month hence; and I will
invite the whole country-side to it. I will invite not only those I
know, but those I have never seen;" but it is our women-folk who have to
take thought for it. It is they who have to bear in mind everything
necessary to make it all adequate and splendid; it is they who have to
take into cons