e--but the Right Honorable Lady
Caroline Grey and her niece, Miss Daphne Rohan, granddaughter of the
late and niece of the present Marquis of Whitby!

And Mrs. Gibson felt as much at home with them in five minutes as if
she'd known them all her life.

Leah was summoned from below, and kissed and congratulated by the
two aristocratic relatives of Barty's, and relieved of her shyness
in a very short time indeed.

[Illustration: "LEAH WAS SUMMONED FROM BELOW"]

As a matter of fact, Lady Caroline, who knew her nephew well, and
thoroughly understood his position, was really well pleased; she had
never forgotten her impression of Leah when she met her in the park with
Ida and me a year back, and we all walked by the Serpentine together--a
certain kind of beauty seems to break down all barriers of rank; and she
knew Leah's character both from Barty and me, and from her own native
shrewdness of observation. She had been delighted to hear from Barty of
Leah's resolute participation in her father's troubles, and in his
attempt--so successful through her--to rehabilitate his business. To
her old-fashioned aristocratic way of looking at things, there was
little to choose between a respectable West End shopkeeper and a medical
practitioner or dentist or solicitor or architect--or even an artist,
like Barty himself. Once outside the Church, the Army and Navy, or a
Government office, what on earth did it matter _who_ or _what_ one was,
or wasn't? The only thing she couldn't stand was that horrid form of
bourgeois gentility, the pretension to seem something better than you
really are. Mrs. Gibson was so naively honest in her little laments over
her lost grandeur that she could hardly be called vulgar about it.

Mr. Gibson didn't appear; he was overawed, and distrusted himself. I
doubt if Lady Caroline would have liked anything in the shape of
jocose familiarity; and I fear her naturalness and simplicity and
cordiality of manner, and the extreme plainness of her attire, might
have put him at his ease almost a trifle too much.

Whether her ladyship would have been so sympathetic about this
engagement if Barty had been a legitimate Rohan--say a son of her
own--is perhaps to be doubted; but anyhow she had quite made up her
mind that Leah was a quite exceptional person, both in mind and
manners. She has often said as much to me, and has always had as
high a regard for Barty's wife as for any woman she knows, and has
still--the Rohans