and gold
passementerie; white leather shoes, wrought with gold; long worked
gloves of thick white kid,--muff, fan, mask--all complete. As the bride
came up the hall, she removed her mask, and showed a long pale face,
with an unpleasant expression. Her apparent age was about thirty.

"Give you good even, Madam!" she said, in a high shrill voice--not one
of those which are proverbially "an excellent thing in woman."

"These be your waiting gentlewomen?"

"These are my daughters," said Lady Enville--stiffly, for her; the
mistake had decidedly annoyed her.

"Ah!" And the bride kissed them. Then turning to Rachel,--"This, I
account, is the lady mistress?"

("That camlet!" said Lady Enville to herself, deeply vexed.)

Sir Thomas introduced her gravely,--"My sister."

Lady Gertrude's bold dark eyes scanned Rachel with an air of contempt.
Rachel, on her part, quite reciprocated the feeling.

"You see, Niece, we keep our velvets for Sundays hereaway," she said in
her dry way.

The bride answered by an affected little laugh, a kiss, and a
declaration that travelling ruined everything, and that she was not fit
to be seen. At a glance from Lady Enville, Clare offered to show
Gertrude to her chamber, and they went up-stairs together. Jack
strolled out towards the stable.

"Not fit to be seen!" gasped poor Lady Enville. "Sir Thomas, what can
we do? In the stead of eighty pound, I should have laid out eight
hundred, to match her!"

"Bear it, I reckon, my dear," said he quietly.

"Make thy mind easy, Orige," scornfully answered Rachel. "I will lay my
new hood that her father made his fortune in some manner of craft, and
hath not been an Earl above these two years. Very ladies should not
deal as she doth."

Meanwhile, above their heads, the bride was putting Clare through her
catechism.

"One of you maidens is not in very deed Sir John's sister. Which is
it?"

"_Sir_ John?" repeated Clare in surprise.

"Of course. Think you I would have wedded a plain Master? I caused my
father to knight him first.--Which is it?"

"That am I," said Clare.

"Oh, you? Well, you be not o'er like him. But you look all like unto
common country folk that had never been in good company."

Though Clare might be a common country girl, yet she was shocked by
Gertrude's rudeness. She had been brought up by Rachel to believe that
the quality of her dress was of less consequence than that of her
manners. Clare thought that