woman have an
innocent, unsuspecting soul as delicate as the curled cup of a Nile
lily, the more easily will it droop and wither in the heated grasp of a
careless, cruel hand. And to this flower-crushing task Lady Winsleigh
set herself,--partly for malice pretense against Errington, whose
coldness to herself in past days had wounded her vanity, and partly for
private jealousy of Thelma's beauty and attractiveness.

Within a short time she had completely won the girl's confidence and
affection,--Sir Philip, forgetting his former suspicions of her, was
touched and disarmed by the attachment and admiration she openly
displayed towards his young wife,--she and Thelma were constantly seen
together, and Mrs. Rush-Marvelle, far-sighted as she generally was,
often sighed doubtfully and rubbed her nose in perplexity as she
confessed she "couldn't quite understand Clara." But Mrs. Rush-Marvelle
had her hands full of other matters,--she was aiding and abetting Marcia
Van Clupp to set traps for that mild mouse Lord Masherville,--and she
was too much absorbed in this difficult and delicate business to attend
to anything else just then. Otherwise, it is possible she might have
scented danger for Thelma's peace of mind, and being good-natured, might
have warded it off before it approached too closely,--but, like
policeman who are never within call when wanted, so friends are seldom
at hand when their influence might be of real benefit.

The Van Clupps were people Thelma could not get on with at all--she
tried to do so because Mrs. Rush-Marvelle had assured her they were
"charming"-and she liked Mrs. Marvelle sufficiently well to be willing
to please her. But, in truth, these rich and vulgar Yankees seemed to
her mind less to be esteemed than the peasants of the Altenfjord, who in
many instances possessed finer tact and breeding than old Van Clupp, the
man of many dollars, whose father had been nothing but a low navvy, but
of whom he spoke now with smirking pride as a real descendant of the
Pilgrim Fathers. An odd thing it is, by the way, how fond some Americans
are of tracing back their ancestry to these virtuous old gentlemen! The
Van Clupps were of course not the best types of their country--they were
of that class who, because they have money, measure everything by the
money-standard, and hold even a noble poverty in utter contempt. Poor
Van Clupp! It was sometimes pitiable to see him trying to be a
gentleman--"going in" for "sty