h everybody to get sick of that
poor child's very name."

Lucy sprang up from her chair at this outrage; she could not bear any
more. A flush of almost fury came upon her face. She went up to the
mantelpiece, which was a very fine one of carved wood, and leant her
head upon it. She did not trust herself to reply.

"Now, I know what you are thinking," said Lady Randolph blandly. "You
are saying to yourself, that horrid old woman, who never had a child,
how can she know?--and I don't suppose I do," said the clever Dowager
pathetically. "All that sweetness has been denied to me. I have never
had a little creature that was all mine. But when I was your age, Lucy,
and far older than you, I would have given anything--almost my life--to
have had a child."

Lucy melted in a moment, threw herself down upon the hearth-rug upon her
knees, and took Lady Randolph's hands in her own and kissed them.

"Oh, dear aunt, dear aunt!" she cried, "to think I should have gone on
so about little Tom and never remembered that you---- But we are all your
children," she said, in the innocence and fervour of her heart.

"Yes, my love." Lady Randolph freed one of her hands and put it up with
her handkerchief to her cheek. As a matter of fact she did not regret it
now, but felt that a woman when she is growing old is really much more
able to look after her own comforts when she has no children; and yet,
when she remembered how she had been bullied on the subject, and all the
reproaches that had been addressed to her as if it were her fault,
perhaps there was something like a tear. "That is why I venture to say
many things to you that I would not otherwise. Tom, indeed, is too old
to have been my son; but I have felt, Lucy, as if I had a daughter in
you." Then shaking off this little bit of sentiment with a laugh, the
Dowager raised Lucy and kissed her and put her into a chair by her own
side.

"Since we are about it," she said, "there is one other thing I should
like to talk to you about. Of course your husband knows a great deal
more of the world than you do, Lucy; but it is perhaps better that he
should not decide altogether who is to be asked. Men have such strange
notions. If people are amusing it is all they think of. Well, now, there
is that Contessa di Forno-Populo. I would not have her, Lucy, if I were
you."

"But it was she who was the special person," said Lucy, in amaze. "The
others were to come to meet her. She is an old friend."