"Oh, Lady Maria! oh, Lord Walderhurst!" she said, when she managed to
get to them, "how _kind_ you are to me!"

Chapter Five

After she had taken her early tea in the morning, Emily Fox-Seton lay
upon her pillows and gazed out upon the tree-branches near her window,
in a state of bliss. She was tired, but happy. How well everything had
"gone off"! How pleased Lady Maria had been, and how kind of Lord
Walderhurst to ask the villagers to give three cheers for herself! She
had never dreamed of such a thing. It was the kind of attention not
usually offered to her. She smiled her childlike smile and blushed at
the memory of it. Her impression of the world was that people were
really very amiable, as a rule. They were always good to her, at least,
she thought, and it did not occur to her that if she had not paid her
way so remarkably well by being useful they might have been less
agreeable. Never once had she doubted that Lady Maria was the most
admirable and generous of human beings. She was not aware in the least
that her ladyship got a good deal out of her. In justice to her
ladyship, it may be said that she was not wholly aware of it herself,
and that Emily absolutely enjoyed being made use of.

This morning, however, when she got up, she found herself more tired
than she ever remembered being before, and it may be easily argued that
a woman who runs about London on other people's errands often knows what
it is to be aware of aching limbs. She laughed a little when she
discovered that her feet were actually rather swollen, and that she must
wear a pair of her easiest slippers. "I must sit down as much as I can
to-day," she thought. "And yet, with the dinner-party and the excursion
this morning, there may be a number of little things Lady Maria would
like me to do."

There were, indeed, numbers of things Lady Maria was extremely glad to
ask her to do. The drive to the ruins was to be made before lunch,
because some of the guests felt that an afternoon jaunt would leave them
rather fagged for the dinner-party in the evening. Lady Maria was not
going, and, as presently became apparent, the carriages would be rather
crowded if Miss Fox-Seton joined the party. On the whole, Emily was not
sorry to have an excuse for remaining at home, and so the carriages
drove away comfortably filled, and Lady Maria and Miss Fox-Seton watched
their departure.

"I have no intention of having my venerable bones rattled over hill