irst place that the
Stanburys had been very good to her daughter, and she was aware that
Hugh Stanbury had thoroughly taken her daughter's part against his
old friend Trevelyan. She would therefore have been prepared to
receive him kindly had he not on this very morning been the subject
of special conversation between her and Emily. But, as it had
happened, Mrs. Trevelyan had this very day told Lady Rowley the
whole story of Nora's love. The elder sister had not intended to be
treacherous to the younger; but in the thorough confidence which
mutual grief and close conference had created between the mother
and daughter, everything had at last come out, and Lady Rowley had
learned the story, not only of Hugh Stanbury's courtship, but of
those rich offers which had been made by the heir to the barony of
Peterborough.

It must be acknowledged that Lady Rowley was greatly grieved and
thoroughly dismayed. It was not only that Mr. Glascock was the eldest
son of a peer, but that he was represented by the poor suffering wife
of the ill-tempered man to be a man blessed with a disposition sweet
as an angel's. "And she would have liked him," Emily had said, "if
it had not been for this unfortunate young man." Lady Rowley was not
worse than are other mothers, not more ambitious, or more heartless,
or more worldly. She was a good mother, loving her children, and
thoroughly anxious for their welfare. But she would have liked to
be the mother-in-law of Lord Peterborough, and she would have liked,
dearly, to see her second daughter removed from the danger of those
rocks against which her eldest child had been shipwrecked. And when
she asked after Hugh Stanbury, and his means of maintaining a wife,
the statement which Mrs. Trevelyan made was not comforting. "He
writes for a penny newspaper,--and, I believe, writes very well,"
Mrs. Trevelyan had said.

"For a penny newspaper! Is that respectable?"

"His aunt, Miss Stanbury, seemed to think not. But I suppose men of
education do write for such things now. He says himself that it is
very precarious as an employment."

"It must be precarious, Emily. And has he got nothing?"

"Not a penny of his own," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

Then Lady Rowley had thought again of Mr. Glascock, and of the family
title, and of Monkhams. And she thought of her present troubles, and
of the Mandarins, and the state of Sir Marmaduke's balance at the
bankers;--and of the other girls, and of all there was before