. She
wanted no carriage.

Early on the following day there was heard the knock at the door
which Lady Anna had been taught to expect. The coming visit had been
discussed in all its bearings, and it had been settled that Mrs.
Bluestone should be with the daughter when the mother arrived. It was
thought that in this way the first severity of the Countess would be
mitigated, and that the chance of some agreement between them might
be increased. Both the Serjeant and Mrs. Bluestone now conceived that
the young lady had a stronger will of her own than might have been
expected from her looks, her language, and her manners. She had not
as yet yielded an inch, though she would not argue the matter at
all when she was told that it was her positive duty to abandon the
tailor. She would sit quite silent; and if silence does give consent,
she consented to this doctrine. Mrs. Bluestone, with a diligence
which was equalled only by her good humour, insisted on the misery
which must come upon her young friend should she quarrel with the
Countess, and with all the Lovels,--on the unfitness of the tailor,
and the impossibility that such a marriage should make a lady
happy,--on the sacred duty which Lady Anna's rank imposed upon her to
support her order, and on the general blessedness of a well-preserved
and exclusive aristocracy. "I don't mean to say that nobly born
people are a bit better than commoners," said Mrs. Bluestone.
"Neither I nor my children have a drop of noble blood in our veins.
It is not that. But God Almighty has chosen that there should be
different ranks to carry out His purposes, and we have His word to
tell us that we should all do our duties in that state of life to
which it has pleased Him to call us." The excellent lady was somewhat
among the clouds in her theology, and apt to mingle the different
sources of religious instruction from which she was wont to draw
lessons for her own and her children's guidance; but she meant to
say that the proper state of life for an earl's daughter could not
include an attachment to a tailor; and Lady Anna took it as it was
meant. The nobly born young lady did not in heart deny the truth of
the lesson;--but she had learned another lesson, and she did not
know how to make the two compatible. That other lesson taught her to
believe that she ought to be true to her word;--that she specially
ought to be true to one who had ever been specially true to her. And
latterly there had gro