st time of the year. If I were
going honeymooning it is just the time of year I would choose."

"I wish you were, Mary," said Beatrice.

"So do not I, dear, till I have found some decent sort of a body to
honeymoon along with me. I won't stir out of Greshamsbury till I have
sent you off before me, at any rate. And where will you go, Augusta?"

"We have not settled that," said Augusta. "Mr Moffat talks of Paris."

"Who ever heard of going to Paris in September?" said the Lady
Alexandrina.

"Or who ever heard of the gentleman having anything to say on the
matter?" said the doctor's niece. "Of course Mr Moffat will go
wherever you are pleased to take him."

The Lady Alexandrina was not pleased to find how completely the
doctor's niece took upon herself to talk, and sit, and act at
Greshamsbury as though she was on a par with the young ladies of
the family. That Beatrice should have allowed this would not have
surprised her; but it was to be expected that Augusta would have
shown better judgment.

"These things require some tact in their management; some delicacy
when high interests are at stake," said she; "I agree with Miss
Thorne in thinking that, in ordinary circumstances, with ordinary
people, perhaps, the lady should have her way. Rank, however, has its
drawbacks, Miss Thorne, as well as its privileges."

"I should not object to the drawbacks," said the doctor's niece,
"presuming them to be of some use; but I fear I might fail in getting
on so well with the privileges."

The Lady Alexandrina looked at her as though not fully aware whether
she intended to be pert. In truth, the Lady Alexandrina was rather in
the dark on the subject. It was almost impossible, it was incredible,
that a fatherless, motherless, doctor's niece should be pert to an
earl's daughter at Greshamsbury, seeing that that earl's daughter was
the cousin of the Miss Greshams. And yet the Lady Alexandrina hardly
knew what other construction to put on the words she had just heard.

It was at any rate clear to her that it was not becoming that she
should just then stay any longer in that room. Whether she intended
to be pert or not, Miss Mary Thorne was, to say the least, very free.
The de Courcy ladies knew what was due to them--no ladies better;
and, therefore, the Lady Alexandrina made up her mind at once to go
to her own bedroom.

"Augusta," she said, rising slowly from her chair with much stately
composure, "it is nearly time to dress;