it best."

"Well,--perhaps. And yet it is terrible that any man so distant from us
should have our secrets in his keeping."

"As Mary's father, I thought it right that he should know."

"I have always liked the Dean personally," said Lady Sarah. "There is a
manliness about him which has recommended him, and having a full hand
he knows how to open it. But he isn't----; he isn't quite----"

"No; he isn't quite----," said Lord George, also hesitating to
pronounce the word which was understood by both of them.

"You must tell my mother, or I must. It will be wrong to withhold it.
If you like, I will tell Susanna and Amelia."

"I think you had better tell my mother," said Lord George; "she will
take it more easily from you. And then, if she breaks down, you can
control her better." That Lady Sarah should have the doing of any
difficult piece of work was almost a matter of course. She did tell the
tale to her mother, and her mother did break down. The Marchioness,
when she found that an Italian baby had been born twelve months before
the time which she had been made to believe was the date of the
marriage, took at once to her bed. What a mass of horrors was coming on
them! Was she to go and see a woman who had had a baby under such
circumstances? Or was her own eldest son, the very, very Marquis of
Brotherton, to be there with his wife, and was she not to go and see
them? Through it all her indignation against her son had not been hot
as had been theirs against their brother. He was her eldest son,--the
very Marquis,--and ought to be allowed to do almost anything he
pleased. Had it not been impossible for her to rebel against Lady Sarah
she would have obeyed her son in that matter of the house. And, even
now, it was not against her son that her heart was bitter, but against
the woman, who, being an Italian, and having been married, if married,
without the knowledge of the family, presumed to say that her child was
legitimate. Had her eldest son brought over with him to the halls of
his ancestors an Italian mistress that would, of course, have been very
bad, but it would not have been so bad as this. Nothing could be so bad
as this. "Are we to call him Popenjoy?" she asked with a gurgling voice
from amidst the bed clothes. Now the eldest son of the Marquis of
Brotherton would, as a matter of course, be Lord Popenjoy, if
legitimate. "Certainly we must," said Lady Sarah, authoritatively,
"unless the marriage should be disp