at the Dowager thinks about it."

"My husband is with his mother. She thinks, I suppose, just what we all
think, that it would have been better if he had told everybody of his
marriage sooner."

"A great deal better."

"I don't know whether, after all, it will make a great deal of
difference. Lady Brotherton,--the Dowager I mean,--is so thoroughly
English in all her ways that she never could have got on very well with
an Italian daughter-in-law."

"The question is whether when a man springs a wife and family on his
relations in that way, everything can be taken for granted. Suppose a
man had been ever so many years in Kamptschatka, and had then come back
with a Kamptschatkean female, calling her his wife, would everybody
take it as all gospel?"

"I suppose so."

"Do you? I think not. In the first place it might be difficult for an
Englishman to get himself married in that country according to English
laws, and in the next, when there, he would hardly wish to do so."

"Italy is not Kamptschatka, Miss Houghton."

"Certainly not; and it isn't England. People are talking about it a
great deal, and seem to think that the Italian lady oughtn't to have a
walk over."

Miss Houghton had heard a good deal about races from her brother, and
the phrase she had used was quite an everyday word to her. Lady George
did not understand it, but felt that Miss Houghton was talking very
freely about a very delicate matter. And she remembered at the same
time what had been the aspirations of the lady's earlier life, and put
down a good deal of what was said to personal jealousy. "Papa," she
said, as she went home, "it seems to me that people here talk a great
deal about one's private concerns."

"You mean about Lord Brotherton's marriage."

"That among other things."

"Of course they will talk about that. It is hardly to be considered
private. And I don't know but what the more it is talked about the
better for us. It is felt to be a public scandal, and that feeling may
help us."

"Oh, papa, I wish you wouldn't think that we wanted any help."

"We want the truth, my dear, and we must have it."

On the next day they met Jack De Baron in the park. They had not been
long together before the Dean saw an old friend on the footpath and
stopped to speak to him. Mary would have stayed too, had not her horse
displayed an inclination to go on, and that she had felt herself
unwilling to make an effort in the matter. As she rode on wi