and Lord Thrapston, deprived at once of
hope and of restraint, returned to his old courses, till age came upon
him and drove him from practice into reminiscence. Mrs. Glyn had
outlived her husband fifteen years and then followed him, fairly
snubbed to death, some said, by her formidable father-in-law. The
daughter was of sterner stuff, and early discovered for herself that
nothing worse than a scowl or a snarl was to be feared. On her, indeed,
descended a relic of that tenderness her father had enjoyed, and Agatha
used to the full the advantages it gave her. She knew her own
importance. It is not every girl who will be a peeress in her own
right, and she amused her grandfather by calmly informing him that it
was not on the whole a subject for regret that she had not been a boy.
"You see," said she, "we get rid of the new viscounty, and it's much
better to be Warmley than Thrapston."

The fact that she was some day to be 'Warmley' was the mainspring of
that hairbrained jaunt to Lang Marsh in company with Nettie Wallace.
Nettie was the daughter of Lord Thrapston's housekeeper, and the two
girls had been intimate in youth, much as Charlie Merceron and Willie
Prime had been at the Court; and when Nettie, scorning servitude, set
up in life for herself, Agatha gave her her custom and did not withdraw
her friendship. In return, she received an allegiance which refused
none of her behests, and a regard which abolished all formality between
them, except when Nettie got a pen in her hand and set herself to
compose a polite letter. The expedition was, of course, to see the
Court--the old home of the Warmleys, for which Agatha felt a
sentimental attraction. She had told herself that some day, if she were
rich (and, Lord Thrapston not being rich, she must have had some other
resource in her mind), she would buy back Langbury Court and get rid of
the Mercerons altogether. There were only a widow and a boy, she had
heard, and they should have their price. So she went to the Court in
the business-like mood of a possible purchaser (Calder could afford
anything), as well as in the romantic mood of a girl escaped from
every-day surroundings and plunging into a past full of interest to
her. Had not she also read of Agatha Merceron? And in this mixed mood
she remained till one evening at the Pool she had met 'the boy', when
the mood became more mixed still. She dared not now look back on the
struggles she had gone through before her meeting