indeed cause for alarm.

The afternoon post brought a letter from Lord Valleys marked Express.

Lady Valleys opened it with a slight grimace, which deepened as she read.
Her handsome, florid face wore an expression of sadness seldom seen
there. There was, in fact, more than a touch of dignity in her reception
of the unpalatable news.

"Eustace declares his intention of marrying this Mrs. Noel"--so ran her
husband's letter--"I know, unfortunately, of no way in which I can
prevent him. If you can discover legitimate means of dissuasion, it
would be well to use them. My dear, it's the very devil."

It was the very devil! For, if Miltoun had already made up his mind to
marry her, without knowledge of the malicious rumour, what would not be
his determination now? And the woman of the world rose up in Lady
Valleys. This marriage must not come off. It was contrary to almost
every instinct of one who was practical not only by character, but by
habit of life and training. Her warm and full-blooded nature had a
sneaking sympathy with love and pleasure, and had she not been practical,
she might have found this side of her a serious drawback to the main
tenor of a life so much in view of the public eye. Her consciousness of
this danger in her own case made her extremely alive to the risks of an
undesirable connection--especially if it were a marriage--to any public
man. At the same time the mother-heart in her was stirred. Eustace had
never been so deep in her affection as Bertie, still he was her
first-born; and in face of news which meant that he was lost to her--for
this must indeed be 'the marriage of two minds' (or whatever that
quotation was)--she felt strangely jealous of a woman, who had won her
son's love, when she herself had never won it. The aching of this
jealousy gave her face for a moment almost a spiritual expression, then
passed away into impatience. Why should he marry her? Things could be
arranged. People spoke of it already as an illicit relationship; well
then, let people have what they had invented. If the worst came to the
worst, this was not the only constituency in England; and a dissolution
could not be far off. Better anything than a marriage which would
handicap him all his life! But would it be so great a handicap? After
all, beauty counted for much! If only her story were not too
conspicuous! But what was her story? Not to know it was absurd! That
was the worst of people who w