d Maude, truth to say, was almost
as selfishly alive to her own interest as her mother. _She_ should marry
well, and so be in a position to shelter the poor, homeless, wandering
dowager. Had she chosen from the whole batch of peers, not one could have
been found more eligible than he whom fortune seemed to have turned up
for her purpose--Lord Hartledon; and before the countess-dowager had been
one week his guest in London she began her scheming.

Lady Maude was nothing loth. Young, beautiful, vain, selfish, she yet
possessed a woman's susceptible heart; though surrounded with luxury,
dress, pomp, show, which are said to deaden the feelings, and in some
measure do deaden them, Lady Maude insensibly managed to fall in love, as
deeply as ever did an obscure damsel of romance. She had first met him
two years before, when he was Viscount Elster; had liked him then. Their
relationship sanctioned their being now much together, and the Lady Maude
lost her heart to him.

Would it bring forth fruit, this scheming of the countess-dowager's, and
Maude's own love? In her wildest hopes the old woman never dreamed of
what that fruit would be; or, unscrupulous as she was by habit, unfeeling
by nature, she might have carried away Maude from Hartledon within the
hour of their arrival.

Of the three parties more immediately concerned, the only innocent
one--innocent of any intentions--was Lord Hartledon. He liked Maude very
well as a cousin, but otherwise he did not care for her. They might
succeed--at least, had circumstances gone on well, they might have
succeeded--in winning him at last; but it would not have been from love.
His present feeling towards Maude was one of indifference; and of
marriage at all he had not begun to think.

Val Elster, on the contrary, regarded Maude with warm admiration. Her
beauty had charms for him, and he had been oftener at her side but for
the watchful countess-dowager. It would have been horrible had Maude
fallen in love with the wrong brother, and the old lady grew to hate him
for the fear, as well as on her own score. The feeling of dislike, begun
in Val's childhood, had ripened in the last month or two to almost open
warfare. He was always in the way. Many a time when Lord Hartledon might
have enjoyed a _tete-a-tete_ with Maude, Val Elster was there to spoil
it.

But the culminating point had arrived one day, when Val, half laughingly,
half seriously, told the dowager, who had been provoking him