hy.

For the first three days the Marchioness showed herself to no one. It
was understood that the fatigues of the journey had oppressed her, and
that she chose to confine herself to two or three rooms upstairs, which
had been prepared for her. Mrs. Toff, strictly obeying orders which had
come from Cross Hall, sent up her duty and begged to know whether she
should wait upon my lady. My lady sent down word that she didn't want
to see Mrs. Toff. These messages had to be filtered through the
courier, who was specially odious to Mrs. Toff. His Lordship was almost
as closely secluded as her Ladyship. He did, indeed, go out to the
stables, wrapped up in furs, and found fault with everything he saw
there. And he had himself driven round the park. But he did not get up
on any of these days till noon, and took all his meals by himself. The
English servants averred that during the whole of this time he never
once saw the Marchioness or the baby; but then the English servants
could not very well have known what he saw or what he did not see.

But this was very certain, that during those three days he did not go
to Cross Hall, or see any one of his own family. Mrs. Toff in the
gloaming of the evening, on the third day, hurried across the park to
see--the young ladies as she still called them. Mrs. Toff thought that
it was all very dreadful. She didn't know what was being done in those
apartments. She had never set her eyes upon the baby. She didn't feel
sure that there was any baby at all, though John,--John was one of the
English servants,--had seen a bundle come into the house. Wouldn't it
be natural and right that any real child should be carried out to take
the air? "And then all manner of messes were," said Mrs. Toff,
"prepared up in the closed room." Mrs. Toff didn't believe in anything,
except that everything was going to perdition. The Marchioness was
intent on asking after the health and appearance of her son, but Mrs.
Toff declared that she hadn't been allowed to catch a sight of "my
lord." Mrs. Toff's account was altogether very lachrymose. She spoke of
the Marquis, of course, with the utmost respect. But she was
sufficiently intimate with the ladies to treat the baby and its mother
with all the scorn of an upturned nose. Nor was the name of Popenjoy
once heard from her lips.

But what were the ladies to do? On the evening of the third day Lady
Sarah wrote to her brother George, begging him to come down to them.
"The