ven.

"Oh, my father! oh, my father!" he murmured. Then he leant a little
forward watching Lady Calmady.

"But, as you may remember, Mary Cathcart had a charming figure," she
was saying, very sweetly, essaying to soften the coming blow.

"Ah! had she though? Great thing a good figure. I knew she married
well."

"Naturally I agree with you there. I suppose one always thinks one's
own people the most delightful in the world. She married my brother."

"Did she though!" Lord Fallowfeild exclaimed, with much interest. Then
suddenly his tumbler stopped half-way to his mouth, while he gazed
horror-stricken across the table at Mr. Ormiston.

"Oh no, no! not that brother," Katherine added quickly. "The younger
one, the soldier. You wouldn't remember him. He's been on foreign
service almost ever since his marriage. They are at the Cape now."

"Oh! ah! yes--indeed, are they?" he exclaimed. He breathed more easily.
Those few thousand miles to the Cape were a great comfort to him. A man
could not overhear your strictures on his wife's personal appearance at
that distance anyhow.--"Very charming woman, uncommonly tactful woman,
Lady Calmady," he said to himself gratefully.

Meanwhile Lady Louisa Barking, at the other end of the table, addressed
her discourse to Richard and Julius, on either side of her, in the
high, penetrating key affected by certain ladies of distinguished
social pretensions. Whether this manner of speech implies a fine
conviction of superiority on the part of the speaker, or a conviction
that all her utterances are replete with intrinsic interest, it is
difficult to determine. Certain it is that Lady Louisa practically
addressed the table, the attendant men-servants, all creation in point
of fact, as well as her two immediate neighbours. Like her father she
was large and handsome. But her expression lacked his amiability, her
attitude his pleasing self-distrust. In age she was about
six-and-thirty and decidedly mature for that. She possessed a
remarkable power of concentrating her mind upon her own affairs. She
also laboured under the impression that she was truly religious,
listening weekly to the sermons of fashionable preachers on the
convenient text that "worldliness is next to godliness" and
entertaining prejudices, finely unqualified by accurate knowledge,
against the abominable errors of Rome.

"I was getting so terribly fagged with canvassing that my doctor told
me I really must go to Whitney an