ing confidence, with the confidence of an almost idolatrous
mother, that little chit who, a few months since, had sat awkwardly
in one corner of her drawing-room, afraid to speak to any one? And
yet it seemed that it must come to this--to this--or else those
day-dreams of hers would in nowise come to pass. She sat herself
down, trying to think whether it were possible that Lucy might fill
the throne; for she had begun to recognize it as probable that her
son's will would be too strong for her; but her thoughts would fly
away to Griselda Grantly. In her first and only matured attempt to
realize her day-dreams, she had chosen Griselda for her queen. She
had failed there, seeing that the Fates had destined Miss Grantly for
another throne; for another and a higher one, as far as the world
goes. She would have made Griselda the wife of a baron, but fate was
about to make that young lady the wife of a marquis. Was there cause
of grief in this? Did she really regret that Miss Grantly, with all
her virtues, should be made over to the house of Hartletop? Lady
Lufton was a woman who did not bear disappointment lightly; but
nevertheless she did almost feel herself to have been relieved from
a burden when she thought of the termination of the Lufton-Grantly
marriage treaty. What if she had been successful, and, after all, the
prize had been other than she had expected? She was sometimes prone
to think that that prize was not exactly all that she had once hoped.
Griselda looked the very thing that Lady Lufton wanted for a queen;
but how would a queen reign who trusted only to her looks? In that
respect it was perhaps well for her that destiny had interposed.
Griselda, she was driven to admit, was better suited to Lord Dumbello
than to her son. But still--such a queen as Lucy! Could it ever come
to pass that the lieges of the kingdom would bow the knee in proper
respect before so puny a sovereign? And then there was that feeling
which, in still higher quarters, prevents the marriage of princes
with the most noble of their people. Is it not a recognized rule
of these realms that none of the blood royal shall raise to royal
honours those of the subjects who are by birth un-royal? Lucy was
a subject of the house of Lufton in that she was the sister of the
parson and a resident denizen of the parsonage. Presuming that Lucy
herself might do for queen--granting that she might have some faculty
to reign, the crown having been duly placed on