ht that something
might go wrong while her husband was away. And strength was given her."

She was so thrilled that she got up and walked across the room with
quite a fine sweep of heroic movement in her momentary excitement. She
held her head up and smiled with widening eyes.

But she saw Captain Osborn drag at his black moustache to hide an
unattractive grin, and she was at once abashed into feeling silly and
shy. She sat down again with awkward self-consciousness.

"I'm afraid I'm making you laugh at me," she apologised, "but that story
always gives me such a romantic feeling. I like her so."

"Oh! not at all, not all," said Osborn. "I was not laughing really; oh
no!"

But he had been, and had been secretly calling her a sentimental,
ramping idiot.

It was a great day for Jane Cupp when her mother arrived at Palstrey
Manor. It was a great day for Mrs. Cupp also. When she descended from
the train at the little country station, warm and somewhat flushed by
her emotions and the bugled splendours of her best bonnet and black silk
mantle, the sight of Jane standing neatly upon the platform almost
overcame her. Being led to his lordship's own private bus, and seeing
her trunk surrounded by the attentions of an obsequious station-master
and a liveried young man, she was conscious of concealing a flutter with
dignified reserve.

"My word, Jane!" she exclaimed after they had taken their seats in the
vehicle. "My word, you look as accustomed to it as if you had been born
in the family."

But it was when, after she had been introduced to the society in the
servants' hall, she was settled in her comfortable room next to Jane's
own that she realised to the full that there were features of her
position which marked it with importance almost startling. As Jane
talked to her, the heat of the genteel bonnet and beaded mantle had
nothing whatever to do with the warmth which moistened her brow.

"I thought I'd keep it till I saw you, mother," said the girl
decorously. "I know what her ladyship feels about being talked over. If
I was a lady myself, I shouldn't like it. And I know how deep you'll
feel it, that when the doctor advised her to get an experienced married
person to be at hand, she said in that dear way of hers, 'Jane, if your
uncle could spare your mother, how I should like to have her. I've never
forgot her kindness in Mortimer Street.'"

Mrs. Cupp fanned her face with a handkerchief of notable freshness.

"If