,
written down in her girlhood, because of her eyes and her striking air
and excellent deportment, as mate for a nobleman, marries, him before
she is out of her teens. "I said, She shall be a countess." A countess
she is. Providence does not comply with our predictions in order
to stultify us. Admitting the position of affairs for the moment as
extraordinary, we are bound by what has happened to expect they will be
conformable in the end. Temporarily warped, we should say of them.

She could point to the reason: it was Lord Ormont's blunt
misunderstanding of her character. The burgess's daughter was refining
to an appreciation of the exquisite so rapidly that she could criticize
patricians. My lord had never forgiven her for correcting him in his
pronunciation of her name by marriage. Singular indeed; but men, even
great men, men of title, are so, some of them, whom you could least
suspect of their being so. He would speak the "g" in Nargett, and he,
declined--after a remonstrance he declined--to pass Pagnell under the
cedilla. Lord Ormont spoke the name like a man hating it, or an English
rustic: "Nargett Pagnell," instead, of the soft and elegant "Naryett
Pagnell," the only true way of speaking it; and she had always taken
that pronunciation of her name for a test of people's breeding. The
expression of his lordship's countenance under correction was memorable.
Naturally, in those honeymoony days, the young Countess of Ormont sided
with her husband the earl; she declared that her aunt had never dreamed
of the cedilla before the expedition to Spain. When, for example, Alfred
Nargett Pagnell had a laughing remark, which Aminta in her childhood
must have heard: "We rhyme with spaniel!"

That was the secret of Lord Ormont's prepossession against Aminta's
aunt; and who can tell? perhaps of much of his behaviour to the
beautiful young wife he at least admired, sincerely admired, though he
caused her to hang her head--cast a cloud on the head so dear to him!

Otherwise there was no interpreting his lordship. To think of herself as
personally disliked by a nobleman stupefied Mrs. Pagnell, from her just
expectation of reciprocal dealings in high society; for she confessed
herself a fly to a title. Where is the shame, if titles are created to
attract? Elsewhere than in that upper circle, we may anticipate hard
bargains; the widow of a solicitor had not to learn it. But when a
distinguished member and ornament of the chosen se