o the house-maid who
swept the hall, the footman who sorted the letters, and the butler who
sounded the breakfast gong, that a good night's rest had restored to
Tommy the full use of his vocabulary. And when the duchess came sailing
down the stairs, ten minutes after the gong had sounded, and Tommy,
flapping his wings angrily, shrieked at her: "Now then, old girl! Come
on!" she went to breakfast in a more cheerful mood than she had known
for months past.

CHAPTER II

INTRODUCES THE HONOURABLE JANE

The only one of her relatives who practically made her home with the
duchess was her niece and former ward, the Honourable Jane Champion;
and this consisted merely in the fact that the Honourable Jane was the
one person who might invite herself to Overdene or Portland Place,
arrive when she chose, stay as long as she pleased, and leave when it
suited her convenience. On the death of her father, when her lonely
girlhood in her Norfolk home came to an end, she would gladly have
filled the place of a daughter to the duchess. But the duchess did not
require a daughter; and a daughter with pronounced views, plenty of
back-bone of her own, a fine figure, and a plain face, would have
seemed to her Grace of Meldrum a peculiarly undesirable acquisition. So
Jane was given to understand that she might come whenever she liked,
and stay as long as she liked, but on the same footing as other people.
This meant liberty to come and go as she pleased; and no responsibility
towards her aunt's guests. The duchess preferred managing her own
parties in her oven way.

Jane Champion was now in her thirtieth year. She had once been
described, by one who saw below the surface, as a perfectly beautiful
woman in an absolutely plain shell; and no man had as yet looked
beneath the shell, and seen the woman in her perfection. She would have
made earth heaven for a blind lover who, not having eyes for the
plainness of her face or the massiveness of her figure, might have
drawn nearer, and apprehended the wonder of her as a woman,
experiencing the wealth of tenderness of which she was capable, the
blessed comfort of the shelter of her love, the perfect comprehension
of her sympathy, the marvellous joy of winning and wedding her. But as
yet, no blind man with far-seeing vision had come her way; and it
always seemed to be her lot to take a second place, on occasions when
she would have filled the first to infinite perfection.

She had been brid