nary admirer. Depend upon it, all his arts shall
fail."

"You are only laughing at me still, dearest, but there is something in
it I can tell you for all that. It is not my idea alone, I can assure
you. What do you think of a Duke's brother for an admirer, Minola?"

Little Mary Blanchet was a crafty little personage. She thought she
could not too soon begin working for her brother's cause by trying to
throw discredit on the motives of all other possible wooers. She had
observed when going now and then to the house of the Moneys, during the
last few days, that the returned cadet of the one great ducal house
whereof she had any knowledge was there every day, and that he was very
attentive to Minola. The same remark had been made by Mr. Money, and
had called forth an indignant objection from Lucy, who protested
against the thought of her Nola having a broken-down outcast like that
for a lover. But Mary, who was almost terrified at the idea of sitting
down in the same room with any member of the great family who owned the
mausoleum at Keeton, was not certain how far the name of a family like
that might not go with any girl, even Minola, and believed it not an
unwise precaution to begin as soon as possible throwing discredit on
his purposes.

Minola tried not to seem vexed. She had liked to talk to Mr. St. Paul
when he came, as he did every day of her stay in Victoria street. She
had liked it because it gave her no trouble in thinking, and it saved
her from having to talk to others with whom she might have felt more
embarrassed, and because it turned away attention from what might
perhaps have otherwise been observed--as she feared at least--by too
keen eyes. If Mary must suspect anything, it was a relief to find that
she only suspected this, and Minola tried to make merry with her about
her absurdity. But in her secret heart she sickened at such talk, and
such thoughts, and felt as if the very shadow of the fortune which was
expected for her, falling already on her path, was making it one of new
pain and of still less accustomed shame.

"Poverty parts good company, used to be said," Minola thought; "a
little money seems much more likely to part good company in my case."

Yet that there are advantages in a command of money was soon made very
clear to Minola. When she returned from a walk a day or two after she
found a specimen copy of Herbert Blanchet's poems awaiting her, with a
note from Victor Heron. The letter was s