lling
between the two, but there was a lack of that friendship which may
subsist between a stepmother of thirty-eight and a stepdaughter of
twenty-one. Lady Frances was tall and slender, with quiet speaking
features, dark in colour, with blue eyes, and hair nearly black.
In appearance she was the very opposite of her stepmother, moving
quickly and achieving grace as she did so, without a thought, by the
natural beauty of her motions. The dignity was there, but without
a thought given to it. Not even did the little lords, her brothers,
chuck their books and toys about with less idea of demeanour. But
the Marchioness never arranged a scarf or buttoned a glove without
feeling that it was her duty to button her glove and arrange her
scarf as became the Marchioness of Kingsbury.

The stepmother wished no evil to Lady Frances,--only that she should
be married properly and taken out of the way. Any stupid Earl or
mercurial Viscount would have done, so long as the blood and the
money had been there. Lady Frances had been felt to be dangerous,
and the hope was that the danger might be got rid of by a proper
marriage. But not by such a marriage as this!

When that accidental calling of the name was first heard and the
following avowal made, the Marchioness declared her immediate
feelings by a look. It was so that Arthur may have looked when he
first heard that his Queen was sinful,--so that Caesar must have felt
when even Brutus struck him. For though Lady Frances had been known
to be blind to her own greatness, still this,--this at any rate was
not suspected. "You cannot mean it!" the Marchioness had at last
said.

"I certainly mean it, mamma." Then the Marchioness, with one hand
guarding her raiment, and with the other raised high above her
shoulder, in an agony of supplication to those deities who arrange
the fates of ducal houses, passed slowly out of the room. It was
necessary that she should bethink herself before another word was
spoken.

For some time after that very few words passed between her and the
sinner. A dead silence best befitted the occasion;--as, when a child
soils her best frock, we put her in the corner with a scolding;
but when she tells a fib we quell her little soul within her by a
terrible quiescence. To be eloquently indignant without a word is
within the compass of the thoughtfully stolid. It was thus that Lady
Frances was at first treated by her stepmother. She was, however,
at once taken up to