e was clever,
and words came to her freely. It was almost impossible that any
hearer should refuse to sympathise with her,--any hearer who knew
that her words were true. And all that she told was true. The things
which she narrated had been done;--the wrongs had been endured;--and
the end of it all which she feared, was imminent. And the hearer
thought as did the speaker as to the baseness of this marriage with
the tailor,--thought as did the speaker of the excellence of the
marriage with the lord. But still there was something in the woman's
eye,--something in the tone of her voice, something in the very
motion of her hands as she told her story, which made Mrs. Bluestone
feel that Lady Anna should not be left under her mother's control.
It would be very well that the Lovel family should be supported, and
that Lady Anna should be kept within the pale of her own rank. But
there might be things worse than Lady Anna's defection,--and worse
even than the very downfall of the Lovels.

After sitting for nearly two hours with the Countess, Mrs. Bluestone
was taken up-stairs. "Mrs. Bluestone has come to see you," said the
Countess, not entering the room, and retreating again immediately as
she closed the door.

"This is very kind of you, Mrs. Bluestone," said Lady Anna, who was
sitting crouching in her dressing-gown over the fire. "But I thought
that perhaps the Serjeant would come." The lady, taken off her guard,
immediately said that the Serjeant had been there on the preceding
evening. "And mamma would not let me see him! But you will help me!"

In this interview, as in that below, a long history was told to the
visitor, and was told with an eloquent energy which she certainly had
not expected. "They talk to me of ladies," said Lady Anna. "I was not
a lady. I knew nothing of ladies and their doings. I was a poor girl,
friendless but for my mother, sometimes almost without shoes to my
feet, often ragged, solitary, knowing nothing of ladies. Then there
came one lad, who played with me;--and it was mamma who brought us
together. He was good to me, when all others were bad. He played with
me, and gave me things, and taught me,--and loved me. Then when he
asked me to love him again, and to love him always, was I to think
that I could not,--because I was a lady! You despise him because he
is a tailor. A tailor was good to me, when no one else was good. How
could I despise him because he was a tailor? I did not despise him,
bu