en the suspicion did touch her it was not love that she
suspected,--but rather an unbecoming familiarity which she attributed
to her child's ignorance of the great life which awaited her. "My
dear," she said one day when Daniel Thwaite had left them, "you
should be less free in your manner with that young man."

"What do you mean, mamma?" said the daughter, blushing.

"You had better call him Mr. Thwaite."

"But I have called him Daniel ever since I was born."

"He always calls you Lady Anna."

"Sometimes he does, mamma."

"I never heard him call you anything else," said the Countess, almost
with indignation. "It is all very well for the old man, because he is
an old man and has done so much for us."

"So has Daniel;--quite as much, mamma. They have both done
everything."

"True; they have both been warm friends; and if ever I forget them
may God forget me. I trust that we may both live to show them that
they are not forgotten. But it is not fitting that there should exist
between you and him the intimacy of equal positions. You are not and
cannot be his equal. He has been born to be a tailor, and you are the
daughter and heiress of an Earl."

These last words were spoken in a tone that was almost awful to
the Lady Anna. She had heard so much of her father's rank and her
father's wealth,--rank and wealth which were always to be hers,
but which had never as yet reached her, which had been a perpetual
trouble to her, and a crushing weight upon her young life, that she
had almost learned to hate the title and the claim. Of course it was
a part of the religion of her life that her mother had been duly
married to her father. It was beyond a doubt to her that such was the
case. But the constant battling for denied rights, the assumption of
a position which could not be attained, the use of titles which were
simply ridiculous in themselves as connected with the kind of life
which she was obliged to lead,--these things had all become odious
to her. She lacked the ambition which gave her mother strength, and
would gladly have become Anna Murray or Anna Lovel, with a girl's
ordinary privilege of loving her lover, had such an easy life been
possible to her.

In person she was very lovely, less tall and robust than her mother
had been, but with a sweeter, softer face. Her hair was less dark,
and her eyes were neither blue nor bold. But they were bright and
soft and very eloquent, and when laden with tears would have so