word. Isn't it odd how that lady Doctor could
speak like that."

"De American young woman! Dey have de impudence of--of--of everything
you please; but it come to noting."

"But she spoke well."

"Dear me, no; noting at all. Dere was noting but vords, vords, vords.
Tank you; here I am. Mind you come again, and you shall learn to
speak."

Lady George, as she was driven home, was lost in her inability to
understand it all. She had thought that the Doctor spoke the best of
all, and now she was told that it was nothing. She did not yet
understand that even people so great as female orators, so nobly
humanitarian as the Baroness Banmann, can be jealous of the greatness
of others.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LORD GEORGE UP IN LONDON.

Lord George returned to town the day after the lecture, and was not
altogether pleased that his wife should have gone to the Disabilities.
She thought, indeed, that he did not seem to be in a humour to be
pleased with anything. His mind was thoroughly disturbed by the coming
of his brother, and perplexed with the idea that something must be done
though he knew not what. And he was pervaded by a feeling that in the
present emergency it behoved him to watch his own steps, and more
especially those of his wife. An anonymous letter had reached Lady
Sarah, signed, "A Friend of the Family," in which it was stated that
the Marquis of Brotherton had allied himself to the highest blood that
Italy knew, marrying into a family that had been noble before English
nobility had existed, whereas his brother had married the granddaughter
of a stable-keeper and a tallow chandler. This letter had, of course,
been shown to Lord George; and, though he and his sisters agreed in
looking upon it as an emanation from their enemy, the new Marchioness,
it still gave them to understand that she, if attacked, would be
prepared to attack again. And Lord George was open to attack on the
side indicated. He was, on the whole, satisfied with his wife. She was
ladylike, soft, pretty, well-mannered, and good to him. But her
grandfathers had been stable-keepers and tallow-chandlers. Therefore it
was specially imperative that she should be kept from injurious
influences. Lady Selina Protest and Aunt Ju, who were both well-born,
might take liberties; but not so his wife. "I don't think that was a
very nice place to go to, Mary."

"It wasn't nice at all, but it was very funny. I never saw such a
vulgar creature as the Baroness