y felt that the less she should
see of Lizzie Fawn the better she should like it.

Before an hour was over, Frank Greystock was walking round the
shrubberies with Lucy,--and was walking with Lucy alone. It was
undoubtedly the fact that Lady Eustace had contrived that it should
be so. The unfitness of the thing recommended it to her. Frank could
hardly marry a wife without a shilling. Lucy would certainly not
think at all of shillings. Frank,--as Lizzie knew,--had been almost
at her feet within the last fortnight, and might, in some possible
emergency, be there again. In the midst of such circumstances nothing
could be better than that Frank and Lucy should be thrown together.
Lizzie regarded all this as romance. Poor Lady Fawn, had she known it
all, would have called it diabolical wickedness and inhuman cruelty.

"Well, Lucy;--what do you think of it?" Frank Greystock said to her.

"Think of what, Mr. Greystock?"

"You know what I mean;--this marriage?"

"How should I be able to think? I have never seen them together. I
suppose Lord Fawn isn't very rich. She is rich. And then she is very
beautiful. Don't you think her very beautiful?"

"Sometimes exquisitely lovely."

"Everybody says so;--and I am sure it is the fact. Do you know;--but
perhaps you'll think I am envious."

"If I thought you envious of Lizzie, I should have to think you very
foolish at the same time."

"I don't know what that means;"--she did know well enough what it
meant;--"but sometimes to me she is almost frightful to look at."

"In what way?"

"Oh, I can't tell you. She looks like a beautiful animal that you are
afraid to caress for fear it should bite you;--an animal that would
be beautiful if its eyes were not so restless, and its teeth so sharp
and so white."

"How very odd."

"Why odd, Mr. Greystock?"

"Because I feel exactly in the same way about her. I am not in
the least afraid that she'll bite me; and as for caressing the
animal,--that kind of caressing which you mean,--it seems to me to be
just what she's made for. But, I do feel sometimes, that she is like
a cat."

"Something not quite so tame as a cat," said Lucy.

"Nevertheless she is very lovely,--and very clever. Sometimes I think
her the most beautiful woman I ever saw in the world."

"Do you, indeed?"

"She will be immensely run after as Lady Fawn. When she pleases she
can make her own house quite charming. I never knew a woman who could
say pretty things to s