he knew
how necessary it was that she should have some companion at the
present emergency of her life, and therefore could not at once send
Miss Macnulty away; but she would sometimes become very cross, and
would tell poor Macnulty that she was--a fool. Upon the whole,
however, to be called a fool was less objectionable to Miss Macnulty
than were demands for sympathy which she did not know how to give.

Those first ten days of August went very slowly with Lady Eustace.
"Queen Mab" got itself poked away, and was heard of no more. But
there were other books. A huge box full of novels had come down, and
Miss Macnulty was a great devourer of novels. If Lady Eustace would
talk to her about the sorrows of the poorest heroine that ever saw
her lover murdered before her eyes, and then come to life again with
ten thousand pounds a year,--for a period of three weeks, or till
another heroine, who had herself been murdered, obliterated the
former horrors from her plastic mind,--Miss Macnulty could discuss
the catastrophe with the keenest interest. And Lizzie, finding
herself to be, as she told herself, unstrung, fell also into
novel-reading. She had intended during this vacant time to master the
"Faery Queen;" but the "Faery Queen" fared even worse than "Queen
Mab;"--and the studies of Portray Castle were confined to novels. For
poor Macnulty, if she could only be left alone, this was well enough.
To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and
to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods. But it was not
so with Lady Eustace. She asked much more than that, and was now
thoroughly discontented with her own idleness. She was sure that she
could have read Spenser from sunrise to sundown, with no other break
than an hour or two given to Shelley,--if only there had been some
one to sympathise with her in her readings. But there was no one,
and she was very cross. Then there came a letter to her from her
cousin,--which for that morning brought some life back to the castle.
"I have seen Lord Fawn," said the letter, "and I have also seen Mr.
Camperdown. As it would be very hard to explain what took place at
these interviews by letter, and as I shall be at Portray Castle on
the 20th,--I will not make the attempt. We shall go down by the night
train, and I will get over to you as soon as I have dressed and
had my breakfast. I suppose I can find some kind of a pony for the
journey. The 'we' consists of myself and my