onderful air.
Let me look at him." She took the baby from the young woman's arms,
which yielded him slowly and reluctantly. "Oh, yes, he is looking
famously."

"What a pretty baby!" Celia exclaimed, bending over the child with all a
young girl's rapture. "It's a darling."

The young mother's pale face flushed, and the faded blue eyes grew
radiant for a moment, as she raised them gratefully to Celia's face; but
the flush, the radiance, vanished almost instantly, and the face became
patient and sad again.

"You must try to get some of the baby's roses in your own cheeks,
Susie," said her ladyship, peering at the girl.

"Yes, my lady," came the passive response. She took the child into her
own arms, pressing it to her with a little convulsive movement, then, as
the carriage drove off, dropped a curtsy.

"That's a sad business," said Lady Gridborough, speaking rather to
herself than to her companion. "It's the old story: selfish man, weak
woman."

"She is a stranger here?" asked Celia.

"Yes; she was born in a little village where I live sometimes. I brought
her here--was obliged to. They were harrowing the poor child to death,
the toads! She was dying by inches, she and the child, too, and so I
carried her away from her own place and stuck her into this cottage."

"That was very good of you," said Celia, warmly.

"Oh, well, whenever I see Susie, I think of my own girlhood and its
temptations, and say to myself, like the man whose name I can't
remember, 'but for the grace of God, there goes Constance Gridborough.'
Here we are!"

They had covered the long drive, and reached a house almost as grand as
the hall. As at the Hall, there was a superfluity of servants, and one
would have thought the little Exmoor was an elephant by the way in which
a couple of grooms sprang forward to his diminutive head. The old lady,
leaning on a stick and the arm of a footman, led Celia into the house.

While lunch was in progress the old lady talked in the same friendly and
familiar way, as if she had known Celia for years.

"I suppose you're a college girl? Wiggins, help Miss Grant to some
chicken. You must make a good lunch, for I am sure you must be hungry.
Father and mother living?"

"No," said Celia, quietly.

"That's sad," commented her ladyship. "And so you're thrown on your own
resources. Well, they look as if they'd stand by you. I'm glad you've
come to the Hall, now I find that you're not a blue-stocking and don't
w