ything were to go wrong
there, you wouldn't know where to go for comfort. If anything were
wrong with you here, you could come to me as though I were your
mother.--Couldn't you, now?"

"Indeed, indeed I could! And I will;--I always will. Lady Fawn, I
love you and the dear darling girls better than all the world--except
Mr. Greystock. If anything like that were to happen, I think I should
creep here and ask to die in your house. But it won't. And just now
it will be better that I should go away."

It was found at last that Lucy must have her way, and letters were
written both to Mrs. Greystock and to Frank, requesting that the
suggested overtures might at once be made to Lady Linlithgow. Lucy,
in her letter to her lover, was more than ordinarily cheerful and
jocose. She had a good deal to say about Lady Linlithgow that was
really droll, and not a word to say indicative of the slightest fear
in the direction of Lady Eustace. She spoke of poor Lizzie, and
declared her conviction that that marriage never could come off now.
"You mustn't be angry when I say that I can't break my heart for
them, for I never did think that they were very much in love. As for
Lord Fawn, of course he is my--ENEMY!" And she wrote the word in big
letters. "And as for Lizzie,--she's your cousin, and all that. And
she's ever so pretty, and all that. And she's as rich as Croesus,
and all that. But I don't think she'll break her own heart. I would
break mine; only--only--only-- You will understand the rest. If it
should come to pass, I wonder whether 'the duchess' would ever let a
poor creature see a friend of hers in Bruton Street?" Frank had once
called Lady Linlithgow the duchess, after a certain popular picture
in a certain popular book, and Lucy never forgot anything that Frank
had said.

It did come to pass. Mrs. Greystock at once corresponded with Lady
Linlithgow, and Lady Linlithgow, who was at Ramsgate for her autumn
vacation, requested that Lucy Morris might be brought to see her at
her house in London on the 2nd of October. Lady Linlithgow's autumn
holiday always ended on the last day of September. On the 2nd of
October Lady Fawn herself took Lucy up to Bruton Street, and Lady
Linlithgow appeared. "Miss Morris," said Lady Fawn, "thinks it right
that you should be told that she's engaged to be married." "Who
to?" demanded the countess. Lucy was as red as fire, although she
had especially made up her mind that she would not blush when the