dy Maria Bayne and that Lady Maria's intention was to keep her. The
scene between the three was far too subtle to be of the least use upon
the stage, but it was a good scene, nevertheless. Its expression was
chiefly, perhaps, a matter of inclusion and exclusion, and may also have
been largely telepathic; but after it was over, Lady Maria chuckled
several times softly to herself, like an elderly bird of much humour,
and Lady Malfry went home feeling exceedingly cross.

She was in so perturbed a humour that she dropped her eyelids and looked
rather coldly down the bridge of her nose when her stupidly cheery
little elderly husband said to her,--

"Well, Geraldine?"

"I beg pardon," she replied. "I don't quite understand."

"Of course you do. How about Emily Fox-Seton?"

"She seems very well, and of course she is well satisfied. It would not
be possible for her to be otherwise. Lady Maria Bayne has taken her up."

"She is Walderhurst's cousin. Well, well! It will be an immense position
for the girl."

"Immense," granted Lady Malfry, with a little flush. A certain tone in
her voice conveyed that discussion was terminated. Sir George knew that
her niece was not coming to them and that the immense position would
include themselves but slightly.

Emily was established temporarily at South Audley Street with Jane Cupp
as her maid. She was to be married from Lady Maria's lean old arms, so
to speak. Her ladyship derived her usual epicurean enjoyment from the
whole thing,--from too obviously thwarted mothers and daughters; from
Walderhurst, who received congratulations with a civilly inexpressive
countenance which usually baffled the observer; from Emily, who was
overwhelmed by her emotions, and who was of a candour in action such as
might have appealed to any heart not adapted by the flintiness of its
nature to the macadamising of roads.

If she had not been of the most unpretentious nice breeding and
unaffected taste, Emily might have been ingenuously funny in her process
of transformation.

"I keep forgetting that I can afford things," she said to Lady Maria.
"Yesterday I walked such a long way to match a piece of silk, and when I
was tired I got into a penny bus. I did not remember until it was too
late that I ought to have called a hansom. Do you think," a shade
anxiously, "that Lord Walderhurst would mind?"

"Just for the present, perhaps, it would be as well that I should see
that you shop in the carriage," her