had not been so with
her. She had not soared as she should have done, above the love-laden
dreams of common maidens. And so the visit to Yoxham was permitted.
Then came the great blow,--struck as it were by a third hand, and
that the hand of an attorney. The Countess Lovel learned through Mr.
Goffe,--who had heard the tale from other lawyers,--that her daughter
Lady Anna Lovel had, with her own mouth, told her noble lover that
she was betrothed to a tailor! She felt at the moment that she could
have died,--cursing her child for this black ingratitude.

But there might still be hope. The trial was going on,--or the work
which was progressing towards the trial, and she was surrounded by
those who could advise her. Doubtless what had happened was a great
misfortune. But there was room for hope;--room for most assured hope.
The Earl was not disposed to abandon the match, though he had, of
course, been greatly annoyed,--nay, disgusted and degraded by the
girl's communication. But he had consented to see the matter in the
proper light. The young tailor had got an influence over the girl
when she was a child, was doubtless in pursuit of money, and must
be paid. The folly of a child might be forgiven, and the Earl would
persevere. No one would know what had occurred, and the thing would
be forgotten as a freak of childhood. The Countess had succumbed to
the policy of all this;--but she was not deceived by the benevolent
falsehood. Lady Anna had been over twenty when she had been receiving
lover's vows from this man, reeking from his tailor's board. And her
girl, her daughter, had deceived her. That the girl had deceived her,
saying there was no other lover, was much; but it was much more and
worse and more damnable that there had been thorough deception as
to the girl's own appreciation of her rank. The sympathy tendered
through so many years must have been always pretended sympathy. With
these feelings hot within her bosom, she could not bring herself to
speak one kindly word to Lady Anna after the return from Yoxham. The
girl was asked to abandon her odious lover with stern severity. It
was demanded of her that she should do so with cruel threats. She
would never quite yield, though she had then no strength of purpose
sufficient to enable her to declare that she would not yield. We know
how she was banished to Bedford Square, and transferred from the
ruthless persistency of her mother, to the less stern but not less
fixed m