Nora took her friend by the arm as she
spoke,--"it is this one that is to be Mrs. Glascock."

"It is a most natural mistake to make," said Caroline.

Lady Rowley became very red in the face, and was unhappy. "I
declare," she said, "that they told me it was your elder sister."

"But I have no elder sister," said Caroline, laughing.

"Of course she is oldest," said Nora,--"and looks to be so, ever so
much. Don't you, Miss Spalding?"

"I have always supposed so."

"I don't understand it at all," said Lady Rowley, who had no image
before her mind's eye but that of Wallachia Petrie, and who was
beginning to feel that she had disgraced her own judgment by the
criticisms she had expressed everywhere as to Mr. Glascock's bride.
"I don't understand it at all. Do you mean that both your sisters are
younger than you, Miss Spalding?"

"I have only got one, Lady Rowley."

"Mamma, you are thinking of Miss Petrie," said Nora, clapping both
her hands together.

"I mean the lady that wears the black bugles."

"Of course you do;--Miss Petrie. Mamma has all along thought that Mr.
Glascock was going to carry away with him the republican Browning!"

"Oh, mamma, how can you have made such a blunder!" said Sophie
Rowley. "Mamma does make such delicious blunders."

"Sophie, my dear, that is not a proper way of speaking."

"But, dear mamma, don't you?"

"If somebody has told me wrong, that has not been my fault," said
Lady Rowley.

The poor woman was so evidently disconcerted that Caroline Spalding
was quite unhappy. "My dear Lady Rowley, there has been no fault. And
why shouldn't it have been so? Wallachia is so clever, that it is the
most natural thing in the world to have thought."

"I cannot say that I agree with you there," said Lady Rowley,
somewhat recovering herself.

"You must know the whole truth now," said Nora, turning to her
friend, "and you must not be angry with us if we laugh a little at
your poetess. Mamma has been frantic with Mr. Glascock because he has
been going to marry,--whom shall I say,--her edition of you. She has
sworn that he must be insane. When we have sworn how beautiful you
were, and how nice, and how jolly, and all the rest of it,--she has
sworn that you were at least a hundred, and that you had a red nose.
You must admit that Miss Petrie has a red nose."

"Is that a sin?"

"Not at all in the woman who has it; but in the man who is going to
marry it,--yes. Can't you see how we have all