handing the sugar, while Freda was pouring out
the tea. She had been named on the ladies' entrance, and the colour rose
to her eyes but she said nothing, while there was a confusion of, 'I beg
pardon. I understand.'

'Report makes a good many mistakes,' said Lady Kenton coolly. 'Mary, my
dear, you have given me no sugar.'

It was the first time of calling her by her Christian name, and done for
the sake of making the equal intimacy apparent. In fact, Mary was
behaving herself better than the visitors, as Lady Kenton absolutely told
her when a sort of titter was heard in the hall, where they were
expressing to Freda their horror at the scrape, and extorting that Miss
Marshall was really a governess.

'But quite a lady,' said Freda stoutly, 'and we are all as fond of her as
possible.'

It showed how much progress she had made that even this shock did not set
her to express any more faint-hearted doubts, and, when Lord Northmoor
arrived the next day, the involuntary radiance on both their faces was
token enough that they were all the world to each other. Mary allowed
herself to venture on getting Lady Kenton's counsel on the duties of
household headship that would fall on her; and instead of being terrified
at the great garden-party and dinner-party to be held at Coles Kenton,
eagerly availed herself of instruction in the details of their
management. She had accepted her fate, and when the two were seen moving
about among the people of the party they neither of them looked
incongruous with the county aristocracy. Quiet, retiring, and
insignificant they might be, but there was nothing to remark by the most
curious eyes of those who knew they were to see the new peer and his
destined bride; in fact, as George and Freda privately remarked, they
were just the people that nobody ever would see at all, unless they were
set up upon a pedestal.

Mary still feebly suggested, when the marriage was spoken of, that it
might be wiser for Frank to wait a year, get over his first expenses and
feel his way; but he would not hear of her going back to her work, and
pleaded his solitude so piteously that she could not but consent to let
it take place as soon as possible. They would fain have kept it as
private as possible, but their good friends were of opinion that it was
necessary to give them a start with some _eclat_, and insisted that it
should take place with all due honours at Coles Kenton, where Mary was
treated like a