at
I am a siren. My mind is full of the Bond of Association and your
Meeting at St. James's Hall. How shamefully Lord Cavernake has behaved,
but dear Lord Gretingham has come out well. What a miserable set we have
in the Lords just now!"

She was making these remarks as the clock struck the hour, and her
father entered the room.

"Beauclerk came early, dear papa," said she, "because he had something
to tell us. His engagement is broken off."

Lord Garrow looked the grief appropriate to the news, and disguised, as
well as he could, his dismay at its probable development. He murmured,
"Tut! tut!" a number of times, held up his hands, and nodded his head
from side to side.

"I wish nothing said against poor Agnes," observed Reckage; "her
mistakes are those of a generous, impetuous girl. Don't judge her
hastily. All, I feel certain, has happened for the best."

"Tut! tut!" repeated his lordship.

"I am devoted to dear Agnes," said Sara, "but I never, never thought
that she was the wife for Beauclerk."

Then she stepped forward to greet Lady Augusta Hammit, who was at that
moment announced. Lady Augusta was a tall woman about thirty-five years
of age, with a handsome, sallow face, a superb neck, beautiful arms,
hair the colour of ashes, pale lips, and large, gleaming white teeth.
Unmarried, aristocratic, ordinarily well-off, and exceptionally pious
according to her lights, she was a prominent figure in all work
connected with the Moderate Party in the Church of England. In her
opinion, foreigners might be permitted the idolatries of Rome; as for
the English, Wesley was a lunatic; Pusey, a weak good creature; Newman
was a traitor; Manning, a mistake. The one vital force on whom she
depended for her spiritual illumination and her life's security was the
Rev. Edwin Pole-Knox. "Pole-Knox," she said, "will save us yet." This
good and industrious young man, a few years her junior, had been
chaplain--mainly through Lady Augusta's devoted exertions--to three
bishops. He did every credit to his patroness, but hints were already in
the air on the subject of ingratitude. Some said he lacked ambition;
others murmured dark conjectures about his heartlessness. It was left
to the Lady Augusta's fellow-labourers in the sphere of beneficence to
blurt out, with odious vulgarity, that he would never marry her in this
world. She entered the room that evening in her haughtiest manner, for
Pole-Knox was following close upon her heels, an