subject up for
that night, and could only comfort herself by endeavouring to believe
that the suddenness of the tidings had confused her child.

CHAPTER IX.

IT ISN'T LAW.

On the next morning Lady Anna was ill, and would not leave her bed.
When her mother spoke to her, she declared that her head ached
wretchedly, and she could not be persuaded to dress herself.

"Is it what I said to you last night?" asked the Countess.

"Oh, mamma, that is impossible," she said.

It seemed to the mother that the mention of the young lord's name
had produced a horror in the daughter's mind which nothing could for
the present subdue. Before the day was over, however, the girl had
acknowledged that she was bound in duty, at any rate, to meet her
cousin; and the Countess, forced to satisfy herself with so much of
concession, and acting upon that, fixed herself in her purpose to
go on with the project. The lawyers on both sides would assist her.
It was for the advantage of them all that there should be such a
marriage. She determined, therefore, that she would at once see Mr.
Goffe, her own attorney, and give him to understand in general terms
that the case might be proceeded with on this new matrimonial basis.

But there was a grievous doubt on her mind,--a fear, a spark of
suspicion, of which she had unintentionally given notice to Thomas
Thwaite when she asked him whether he had as yet spoken of the
proposed marriage to his son. He had understood what was passing in
her mind when she exacted from him a promise that nothing should as
yet be said to Daniel Thwaite upon the matter. And yet she assured
herself over and over again that her girl could not be so weak, so
vain, so foolish, so wicked as that! It could not be that, after all
the struggles of her life,--when at last success, perfect success,
was within their grasp, when all had been done and all well done,
when the great reward was then coming up to their very lips with a
full tide,--it could not be that in the very moment of victory all
should be lost through the base weakness of a young girl! Was it
possible that her daughter,--the daughter of one who had spent the
very marrow of her life in fighting for the position that was due to
her,--should spoil all by preferring a journeyman tailor to a young
nobleman of high rank, of ancient lineage, and one, too, who by his
marriage with herself would endow her with wealth sufficient to make
that rank splendid as well a