curity in the reticence and dignity
of Lady Frances herself? The idea never presented itself to the
Marchioness. When she heard that the Post Office clerk was coming she
was naturally disgusted. All Lord Hampstead's ideas, doings, and ways
were disgusting to her. She was a woman full of high-bred courtesy,
and had always been gracious to her son-in-law's friends,--but it
had been with a cold grace. Her heart rejected them thoroughly,--as
she did him, and, to tell the truth, Lady Frances also. Lady Frances
had all her mother's dignity, all her mother's tranquil manner, but
something more than her mother's advanced opinions. She, too, had her
ideas that the world should gradually be taught to dispense with the
distances which separate the dukes and the ploughboys,--gradually,
but still with a progressive motion, always tending in that
direction. This to her stepmother was disgusting.

The Post Office clerk had never before been received at Hendon Hall,
though he had been introduced in London by Lord Hampstead to his
sister. The Post Office clerk had indeed abstained from coming,
having urged his own feelings with his friend as to certain
unfitnesses. "A Marquis is as absurd to me as to you," he had said
to Lord Hampstead, "but while there are Marquises they should be
indulged,--particularly Marchionesses. An over-delicate skin is a
nuisance; but if skins have been so trained as not to bear the free
air, veils must be allowed for their protection. The object should be
to train the skin, not to punish it abruptly. An unfortunate Sybarite
Marchioness ought to have her rose leaves. Now I am not a rose leaf."
And so he had stayed away.

But the argument had been carried on between the friends, and the
noble heir had at last prevailed. George Roden was not a rose leaf,
but he was found at Hendon to have flowers of beautiful hues and
with a sweet scent. Had he not been known to be a Post Office
clerk,--could the Marchioness have been allowed to judge of him
simply from his personal appearance,--he might have been taken to be
as fine a rose leaf as any. He was a tall, fair, strongly-built young
man, with short light hair, pleasant grey eyes, an aquiline nose, and
small mouth. In his gait and form and face nothing was discernibly
more appropriate to Post Office clerks than to the nobility at large.
But he was a clerk, and he himself, as he himself declared, knew
nothing of his own family,--remembered no relation but his mother.