ill have had enough of this.

"Not a word? and you promised so many. Somebody has whispered a name to
me. It is Charles. Is that true? I will never forgive you.

"Ever yours,
"CARRIE."

Emmy never answered, poor girl!

CHAPTER X.

"THE PEOPLE OF THE HOUSE."

Lucy Rowe would have been fast friends with Carrie Cockayne during their
stay in her aunt's house, had Mrs. Cockayne, on the one hand, permitted
her daughter to become intimate with anything so low as "the people of
the house," and had Mrs. Rowe, on the other, suffered her niece to
"forget her place." But they did approach each other, by an irresistible
affinity, and by the easy companionship of common tastes. While
Sophonisba engaged ardently in all the doings of the house, and was a
patient retailer of its scandals; and while Mrs. Cockayne was busy with
her evening whist, and morning "looks at the shops"--quiet and retiring
Theodosia managed to become seriously enamoured of the Vicomte de Gars,
who visited Mrs. Rowe's establishment, as the unexceptionable friend of
the Reverend Horace Mohun.

The young Vicomte was a Protestant; of ancient family and limited means.
Where the living scions of the noble stock held their land, and went
forth over their acres from under the ancestral portcullis, was more
than even Mrs. Rowe had been able, with all her penetrating power in
scandal, to ascertain. But the young nobleman was Mr. Mohun's
friend--and that was enough. There had been reverses in the family.
Losses fall upon the noblest lines; and supposing the Count de Gars in
the wine trade--to speak broadly, in the Gironde--this was to his
honour. The great man struggling with the storms of fate, is a glad
picture always to noble minds. Some day he would issue from his cellars,
and don his knightly plume once more, and summon the vulgar intruders to
begone from the Chateau.

As for Mrs. Cockayne, to deny that she was highly contented at the
family's intimacy with a Viscount, would be to falsify my little
fragmentary chain of histories. She wrote to her husband that she met
the very best society at Mrs. Rowe's, extolled the elegant manners and
enclosed the photograph of the Vicomte de Gars, and said she really
began to hope that she had persuaded "his lordship" to pay them a visit
in London. "Tell Mrs. Sandhurst, my dear Cockayne, that I am sure she
will like the