arriage scheme, but she was glad that her
daughter should be induced to go out, even to the Serjeant's house,
as after that visit the girl could have no ground on which to oppose
the meeting which was to be arranged. She could hardly plead that she
was too ill to see her cousin when she had dined with Mrs. Bluestone.

During this time many plans had been proposed for the meeting. The
Solicitor-General, discussing the matter with the young lord, had
thought it best that Lady Anna should at once be asked down to
Yoxham,--as the Lady Anna; and the young lord would have been quite
satisfied with such an arrangement. He could have gone about his
obligatory wooing among his own friends, in the house to which he had
been accustomed, with much more ease than in a London lodging. But
his uncle, who had corresponded on the subject with Mr. Hardy, still
objected. "We should be giving up everything," he said, "if we were
once to call her Lady Anna. Where should we be then if they didn't
hit it off together? I don't believe, and I never shall believe, that
she is really Lady Anna Lovel." The Solicitor-General, when he heard
of this objection, shook his head, finding himself almost provoked to
anger. What asses were these people not to understand that he could
see further into the matter than they could do, and that their best
way out of their difficulty would be frankly to open their arms to
the heiress! Should they continue to be pig-headed and prejudiced,
everything would soon be gone.

Then he had a scheme for inviting the girl to his own house, and to
that scheme he obtained his wife's consent. But here his courage
failed him; or, it might be fairer to say, that his prudence
prevailed. He was very anxious, intensely eager, so to arrange this
great family dispute that all should be benefited,--believing, nay
feeling positively certain that all concerned in the matter were
honest; but he must not go so far as to do himself an absolute and
grievous damage, should it at last turn out that he was wrong in any
of his surmises. So that plan was abandoned.

There was nothing left for it but that the young Earl should himself
face the difficulty, and be introduced to the girl at the lodging in
Wyndham Street. But, as a prelude to this, a meeting was arranged
at Mr. Flick's chambers between the Countess and her proposed
son-in-law. That the Earl should go to his own attorney's chambers
was all in rule. While he was there the Countess c