and
get ready. I will send a wire to your husband to come down and join us
later on. There now, will that content you, you poor, devoted little
soul?"

Hilda smiled and a faint color came into her cheeks.

"Run up to your room, my dear," said good-natured Lady Malvern. "Be as
quick as ever you can getting into the prettiest costume you have, for
we are to be quite a gay party, I can tell you. Now run off, dear, run
off, and pray don't keep me waiting a moment longer than you can help."

Lady Malvern was the sort of person who never could bear anyone to say
"no" to her, and Hilda at first unwillingly, but presently with a sort
of elation and even defiance which was altogether foreign to her gentle
nature, prepared to make herself smart for her unexpected gayety. She
went upstairs, pulled out one of her prettiest trousseau dresses, and,
with hands that trembled, began to array herself in it.

Meanwhile Lady Malvern sat perfectly still in the tiny little dining
room, with a somewhat troubled look on her good-tempered face.

"Now, what has Jasper been doing?" she said to herself. "That sweet
child doesn't look happy. Marks of tears round her eyes, flushed
cheeks--very low spirits. Dear, dear! this will never do. Not more than
three months from the wedding-day."

Lady Malvern had seen very little of her nephew since his marriage. She
knew nothing, therefore, about Judy; but she was just that fussy,
good-natured, hearty sort of body who could not bear anyone with whom
she came in contact to be miserable.

"I must set this right somehow or other," she said to herself. "Jasper
doesn't understand Hilda, and Hilda is wretched, and thinks, poor dear
little goose, that the sun will never shine again, and that life is
practically over for her. She does not know, how could she, poor
darling, how many rubs married people have to live through, and how
jolly and comfortable they are notwithstanding them. Well, well, I am
glad I called. I must set things right between this pair, whatever
happens."

Lady Malvern little guessed, however, that she personally was to have
very little to do with smoothing the rumpled rose-leaves in Hilda's and
Jasper's lives.

When Mrs. Quentyns returned to the little dining room the flush on her
cheeks and the softened look in her sweet eyes but added to her beauty,
and when she found herself bowling away through the pleasant spring air
in her kind friend's company, in spite of herself, her spirits