ean--wear very lovely clothes? To be like them must
I--be very well dressed?"

"You always are very well dressed, are you not?" asks her lover, in
return, casting a loving, satisfied glance over the fresh, inexpensive
Holland gown she wears, with a charming but strictly masculine
disregard of the fact that muslin is not silk, nor cotton cashmere.

"Am I? You stupid boy!" says Molly; but she laughs in a little pleased
way and pats his hand. Next to being praised herself, the sweetest
thing to a woman is to have her dress praised. "Not I. Well, no matter;
they may crush me if they please with their designs by Worth, but I
defy them to have a prettier ring than mine," smiling at her new toy as
it still lies in the middle of her hand. "Is Herst very large, Teddy?
How shall I remember my own room? It will be so awkward to be forever
running into somebody else's, won't it?"

"Your maid will manage all that for you."

"My maid?" coloring slowly, but still with her eyes on his.
"And--supposing I have no maid?"

"Well, then," says Tedcastle, who has been bred in the belief that a
woman without her maid is as lost as a babe without its mother, "why,
then, I suppose, you would borrow one from your nearest neighbor. Cecil
Stafford would lend you hers. I know my sisters were only allowed one
maid between each two; and when they spent the autumn in different
houses they used to toss up which should have her."

"What does a maid do for one, I wonder?" muses independent Molly.

"I should fancy you could better answer that than I."

"No,--because I never had one."

"Well, neither had I," says Luttrell; at which they both laugh.

"I am afraid," says Molly, in a rather dispirited tone, "I shall feel
rather strange at Herst. I wish you could manage to be there the very
day I arrive,--could you, Teddy? I would not be so lonely if I knew for
certain you would be on the spot to welcome me. It is horrible going
there for--that is--to be inspected."

"I will surely be there a day or two after, but I doubt if I could be
there on the twenty-seventh. You may trust me to do my best."

"I suppose it is--a very grand place," questions Molly, growing more
and more depressed, "with dinner-parties every day, and butlers, and
footmen, and all the rest of it? And I shall be there, a stranger, with
no one to care whether I enjoy myself or not."

"You forget me," says Luttrell, quietly.

"True," returns she, brightening; "and whenever you se