o them had been kind and good, whereas they
were treating him with the basest ingratitude.

But how should he see Lady Anna? As he thought of all this he
wandered up from Westminster, where he had eaten his dinner, to
Russell Square and into Keppel Street, hesitating whether he would
at once knock at the door and ask to see Lady Anna Lovel. Lady Anna
was still staying with Mrs. Bluestone; but Daniel Thwaite had not
believed the Countess when she told him that her daughter was not
living with her. He doubted, however, and did not knock at the door.

CHAPTER XXX.

JUSTICE IS TO BE DONE.

It must not be thought that the Countess was unmoved when she
received Daniel Thwaite's letter from Keswick enclosing the copy
of his father's will. She was all alone, and she sat long in her
solitude, thinking of the friend who was gone and who had been always
true to her. She herself would have done for old Thomas Thwaite any
service which a woman could render to a man, so strongly did she feel
all that the man had done for her. As she had once said, no menial
office performed by her on behalf of the old tailor would have been
degrading to her. She had eaten his bread, and she never for a moment
forgot the obligation. The slow tears stood in her eyes as she
thought of the long long hours which she had passed in his company,
while, almost desponding herself, she had received courage from his
persistency. And her feeling for the son would have been the same,
had not the future position of her daughter and the standing of
the house of Lovel been at stake. It was not in her nature to be
ungrateful; but neither was it in her nature to postpone the whole
object of her existence to her gratitude. Even though she should
appear to the world as a monster of ingratitude, she must treat the
surviving Thwaite as her bitterest enemy as long as he maintained
his pretensions to her daughter's hand. She could have no friendly
communication with him. She herself would hold no communication
with him at all, if she might possibly avoid it, lest she should
be drawn into some renewed relation of friendship with him. He was
her enemy,--her enemy in such fierce degree that she was always
plotting the means of ridding herself altogether of his presence
and influence. To her thinking the man had turned upon her most
treacherously, and was using, for his own purposes and his own
aggrandizement, that familiarity with her affairs which he had
acquired