house flowers and ferns, was a study worthy
of a painter of still life. People exclaimed at the beauty of the
picture. The grave old dining-room was transformed from its heavy
splendour to a modern grace that delighted everybody. Mrs. Winstanley's
bosom thrilled with a gentle pride as she sat opposite her husband--he
and she facing each other across the centre of the oval table--at their
first dinner-party.

"My love, I am delighted that you are pleased," he said afterwards,
when she praised his arrangements. "I think I shall be able to show you
that economy does not always mean shabbiness. Our dinners shall not be
too frequent, but they shall be perfect after their kind."

The Captain made another innovation in his wife's mode of existence.
Instead of a daily dropping in of her acquaintance for tea and gossip,
she was to have her afternoon, like Lady Ellangowan. A neat
copper-plate inscription on her visiting-card told her friends that she
was at home on Tuesdays from three to six, and implied that she was not
at home on any other day. Mrs. Winstanley felt her dignity enhanced by
this arrangement, and the Captain hoped thereby to put a stop to a good
deal of twaddling talk, and to lessen the consumption of five-shilling
tea, pound-cake, and cream.

The Duke and Duchess returned to Ashbourne with Lady Mabel a short time
before Christmas, and the Duchess and her daughter came to one of Mrs.
Winstanley's Tuesday afternoons, attended by Roderick Vawdrey. They
came with an evident intention of being friendly, and the Duchess was
charmed with the old oak hall, the wide hearth and Christmas fire of
beech-logs, the light flashing upon the men in armour, and reflected
here and there on the beeswaxed panels as on dark water. In this wintry
dusk the hall looked its best, dim gleams of colour from the old
painted glass mixing with the changeful glow of the fire.

"It reminds me a little of our place in Scotland," said the Duchess,
"only this is prettier. It has a warmer homelier air. All things in
Scotland have an all-pervading stoniness. It is a country overgrown
with granite."

Mrs. Winstanley was delighted to be told that her house resembled one
of the ducal abodes.

"I daresay your Scotch castle is much older than this," she said
deprecatingly. "We only date from Henry the Eighth. There was an abbey,
built in the time of Henry the First; but I am afraid there is nothing
left of that hut the archway leading into the stab