by
subservient lacqueys bowing in line on either side, the Countess had
faintly smiled, and when they had entered their coach and the door been
closed upon them, she had turned this smile with a sweet archness upon
her lord.

"I smile, my Lord," she said, "to think what a great lady your goodness
has made of me, and how in these days I ride forth, and how in the
past, when I was but Clo Wildairs our old chariot lumbered like a house
on wheels, and its leather hung in flaps, and the farm horses pulled it
lurching from side to side, and old Bartlemy had grown too portly for
his livery and cursed when it split as he rolled in his seat." And her
laugh rang out as if it were a chime of bells, and her lord, laughing
with her--but for joy in her arch gayety--adored her.

"If any had told the county then that I would one day ride forth like
this," says she, "from Dunstanwolde House to pay visit to a Duke at
Camylott, who could have believed it? I would not myself. And 'tis you
who have given me all, my dear lord," laying her soft hand in his.
"You, Edward, and I am full of gratefulness."

What wonder that he was a happy man, he who had hoped for so little and
had found so much, since she did not think--as a slighter woman
might--that her youth and beauty paid for and outweighed his richest
gifts, but was heavenly kind and dutiful and tender, giving him of her
brightest humours and prettiest playfulness and gentlest womanly
thought, and receiving his offerings, not as her mere right, but as
signals of his generousness and tender love for her.

"Look, my lady!" he cried, as they drove up the avenue, "see what a
noble house it is; there is no other, in all England, of its size and
beauty. And Gerald waits to receive us with no Duchess at his side."

Her ladyship leaned forward to look, and gazed a moment in silence.

"There should be one," she cried, "to reign over such a place, and to
be happy in it."

The village saw gayety enough to turn its head in the two weeks that
followed. The flag floated from the tower every day, coaches rolled
past the village green laden with the county gentry who came to pay
their respects, gay cavalcades rode down the avenue and through the big
gates to gallop over the country with joyous laughter and talk; at the
Plough Horse, Mr. Mount, who had grown too old for service, but had
been pensioned and was more fond of fine stories than ever, added to
his importance as a gentleman of quality b