h made her more weird than ever, consented.

Then there was a pause, filled by an acid altercation between Lady
Charlotte and her husband, who had not found Rose as grateful for his
attentions as, in his opinion, a pink and white nobody, at a country
dinner-party ought to be, and was glad of the diversion afforded him by
some aggressive remark of his wife. He and she differed on three main
points: politics; the decoration of their London house, Sir. Wynnstay
being a lover of Louis Quinze, and Lady Charlotte a preacher of Morris;
and the composition of their dinner-parties. Lady Charlotte in the
pursuit of amusement and notoriety, was fond of flooding the domestic
hearth with all the people possessed of any sort of a name for any sort
of a reason in London. Mr. Wynnstay loathed such promiscuity; and the
company in which his wife compelled him to drink his wine had seriously
soured a small irritable Conservative with more family pride than either
nerves or digestion.

During the whole passage of arms, Mrs. Darcy watched Elsmere,
cat-and-mouse fashion, with a further confidence burning within her, and
as soon as there was once more a general burst of talk, she pounced upon
him afresh. Would he like to know that after thirty years she had just
finished her _second_ novel, unbeknown to her brother--as she mentioned
him the little face darkened, took a strange bitterness--and it was just
about to be entrusted to the post and a publisher?

Robert was all interest, of course, and inquired the subject. Mrs. Darcy
expanded still more--could, in fact, have hugged him. But, just as
she was launching into the plot a thought, apparently a scruple of
conscience, struck her.

'Do you remember,' she began, looking at him a little darkly, askance,
'what I said about my hobbies the other day? Now, Mr. Elsmere, will you
tell me--don't mind me--don't be polite--have you ever heard people
tell stories of me? Have you ever, for instance, heard them call me
a--a--tuft-hunter?'

'Never! 'said Robert heartily.

'They might,' she said sighing. 'I am a tuft-hunter. I can't help it.
And yet we _are_ a good family, you know. I suppose it was that year
at Court, and that horrid Warham afterward. Twenty years in a cathedral
town--and a very _little_ cathedral town, after Windsor, and Buckingham
Palace, and dear Lord Melbourne! Every year I came up to town to stay
with my father for a month in the season, and if it hadn't been for
that I should