I was completely mistaken
when I told the churchwarden that it was not on Anstice's account that
Lord Blandamer has been visiting at Bellevue Lodge. It seems it was
just for that he came, and the proof of it is he's going to marry her.
In three weeks' time she will be Lady Blandamer, and if you want to say
goodbye to her you'd better come back and have tea with me now, for
she's packed her box, and is off to London to-morrow. Mrs Howard, who
keeps the school in Carisbury where Anstice went in dear Martin's
lifetime, will meet her and take charge of her, and get her trousseau.
Lord Blandamer has arranged it all, and he is going to marry Anstice and
take her for a long tour on the Continent, and I'm sure I don't know
where else."

It was all true. Lord Blandamer made no secret of the matter, and his
engagement to Anastasia, only child of the late Martin Joliffe, Esquire,
of Cullerne, was duly announced in the London papers. It was natural
that Westray should have known vacillation and misgiving before he made
up his mind to offer marriage. It is with a man whose family or
position are not strong enough to bear any extra strain, that public
opinion plays so large a part in such circumstances. If he marries
beneath him he falls to the wife's level, because he has no margin of
resource to raise her to his own. With Lord Blandamer it was different:
his reliance upon himself was so great, that he seemed to enjoy rather
than not, the flinging down of a gauntlet to the public in this
marriage.

Bellevue Lodge became a centre of attraction. The ladies who had
contemned a lodging-house keeper's daughter courted the betrothed of a
peer. From themselves they did not disguise the motive for this change,
they did not even attempt to find an excuse in public. They simply
executed their _volte face_ simultaneously and with most commendable
regularity, and felt no more reluctance or shame in the process than a
cat feels in following the man who carries its meat. If they were
disappointed in not seeing Anastasia herself (for she left for London
almost immediately after the engagement was made public), they were in
some measure compensated by the extreme readiness of Miss Euphemia to
discuss the matter in all its bearings. Each and every detail was
conscientiously considered and enlarged upon, from the buttons on Lord
Blandamer's boots to the engagement-ring on Anastasia's finger; and Miss
Joliffe was never tired of explainin