park, and it was a glorious day.
John Derringham joined them.

"I think I will come with you, too," he said. "You take my place, Sir
Tedbury. It is only fair you should drive one way."

And so it was arranged, not altogether to the satisfaction of the
hostess, who would have preferred to have walked also. However, there
was nothing to be done, and so they were whizzed off, while with the
tail of her eye Cecilia Cricklander perceived that Lord Freynault had
been displaced from Cora's side and was now stalking behind the other
pair, beside Arabella Clinker.

"What an extraordinary sight that was," she said to Sir Tedbury Delvine
as they went along. "I thought no villagers curtsied any more now in
England. That very funny-looking old lady might have been a royalty!"

"It is because she has never had a doubt but that she is--or something
higher--complete owner of all these souls," he returned, "that they have
not yet begun to doubt it either. They and their forebears have bobbed
to the La Sarthe for hundreds of years, and they will go on doing it if
this holder of the name lives to be ninety-nine. They would never do so
to any new-comer, though, I expect."

"But I am told they have not a penny left, and have sold every acre of
the land except the park. Is it not wonderful, Kitty?" Mrs. Cricklander
went on, turning to Lady Maulevrier. "I am dying to know them. I hope
they will call."

But Sir Tedbury had already chanced to have talked the matter over with
John Derringham, because he himself was most anxious to see La Sarthe
Chase, which was of deep historical interest, and had incidentally been
made aware by that gentleman of the old ladies' views, so he hastily
turned the conversation, rather awkwardly, to other things. And a wonder
grew in Mrs. Cricklander's mind.

That anyone should not be enchanted to receive her beautiful and
sought-after self could not enter her brain, but there was evidently
some bar between the acquaintance of herself and her nearest neighbors,
and Arabella should be set to find out of what it consisted.

CHAPTER XV

"Do let us go around by the boundary," Miss Lutworth said when they got
through the Wendover gates. "I long to see even the park of that
exquisite old lady; it must look quite different to anybody else's, and
I feel I want an adventure!"

So they struck in towards the haw-haw--the four walking almost abreast.

When they came to beyond the copse, after it touched the