et over here never could have
received, and that would have been bad, wouldn't it?"

Cassandra turned and looked gravely at the girl. She wished to stop her,
but could not think how to do it. She could not bear to hear her husband
talked over in this way.

"They are tremendous swells. Lady Thryng looks high for him, and well
she may, for mother says he's worthy of a princess, he's that rich and
high bred, too, for all that he was only a doctor over in America.
Mother says it's very fortunate he never married some common sort over
there. They say Lady Thryng wants him to marry Lady Geraldine Temple's
daughter. She is a great beauty, and has a pretty fortune in her own
right, too. They'll be rich enough to entertain the king! And they may
do it, too, some day."

Cassandra sat still and cold. She could not stop the girl now. "Lady
Laura's coming out is to be next week, so his lordship must be home
soon. They say it will be a very grand affair! And I am to see it all,
for mother says she will have a maid, and I may go out there to serve,
and I shall see all the decorations and the fine dresses. That will be
fine, won't it, baby?"

She untied the blue beads and dangled them before the baby's eyes, and
he caught at them and gurgled in baby glee. Cassandra sat silent, rigid,
and cold, unheeding the child or the girl, only vaguely hearing the
chatter.

"And that will be grand, won't it, baby? But he is a love, this boy!
There is Daneshead Castle now, ma'm. You see it through the trees, but
the grounds are so large we have to drive a good bit before we are
there."

The driver turned the ponies' heads, and they scampered through a high
stone gateway and along a smooth road which wound through a dense wood,
with green open spaces interspersed, where deer were browsing. All was
very beautiful and quiet and sweet, but Cassandra, sitting with
wide-open eyes, gravely beautiful, did not see it.

To the girl everything was delightful. She had not the slightest doubt
that the American lady was very rich. That she travelled so simply and
alone was nothing. They all did queer things--the Americans. She was
obtusely unconscious that she had been speaking slightingly of them to
one of themselves, and she talked on after the romantic manner of girls
the world over, giving the gossip of the inn parlors as she listened to
it evening after evening, where the affairs of the nobility were freely
discussed and enlarged and commented upon w