d had that morning been
married to the Reverend Charles Latrobe, family chaplain to her
brother-in-law, Mr Peveril. She hoped that her mother would not be
annoyed, and would receive her and her bridegroom with the usual
cordiality exhibited at weddings.

Madam's, face was a study for a painter. Had Anne Furnival searched
through her whole acquaintance, and selected that one man who would be
least acceptable at Cressingham, she could not have succeeded better.

A chaplain! the son of a French Huguenot refugee, concerned in trade!--
every item, in Madam's eyes, was a lower deep beyond the previous one.
It was considered in those days that the natural wife for a family
chaplain was the lady's maid. That so mean a creature should presume to
lift his eyes to the sister of his patroness, was monstrous beyond
endurance. And a Frenchman!--when Madam looked upon all foreigners as
nuisances whose removal served for practice to the British fleet, and
boasted that she could _not_ speak a word of French, with as much
complacency as would have answered for laying claim to a perfect
knowledge of all the European tongues. And a tradesman's son! A
tradesman, and a gentleman, in her eyes, were terms as incompatible as a
blue rose or a vermilion cat. For a man to soil his fingers with sale,
barter or manufacture, was destructive of all pretension not only to
birth, but to manners.

On the head of her innocent spouse Madam's fury had been outpoured in no
measured terms. Receive the hussy, she vehemently declared, she would
not! She should never set foot in that house again. From this moment
she had but one daughter.

Two years afterwards, on the evening of Catherine's funeral, and of the
transference of baby Rhoda to the care of her grandmother, a young
woman, shabbily dressed, carrying an infant, and looking tired and
careworn, made her way to the back door of the Abbey. She asked for an
interview with Madam.

"I cannot disturb Madam," said the grey-haired servant, not unkindly;
"her daughter was buried this morning. You must come again, my good
woman."

"Must I so, Baxter?" replied the applicant. "Tell her she has one
daughter left. Surely, if ever she will see me, it were to-night."

"Eh, Mrs Anne!" exclaimed the man, who remembered her as a baby in
arms. "Your pardon, Madam, that I knew you not sooner. Well, I cannot
tell! but come what will, it shall never be said that I turned my young
mistress from her mothe