Lady Hainault (nee Burton, not the Dowager) had asked some one to dinner, and the question had been whom to ask to meet him. Mary had been called into consultation, as she generally was on most occasions, and she and Lady Hainault had made up a list together. Every one had accepted, and was coming; and here were Mary and Lady Hainault, dressed for dinner, alone in the drawingroom with the children.

“We could not have done better for him, Mary, I think. You must go in to dinner with him.”

“Is Mary going to stop down to dinner?” said the youngest boy; “what a shame! I sha’n’t say my prayers tonight if she don’t come up.”

The straightforward Gus let his brother know what would be the consequences of such neglect hereafter, in a plain-spoken way peculiarly his own.

“Gus! Gus I don’t say such things,” said Lady Hainault.

“The hymn-book says so, aunt,” said Gus, triumphantly; and he quoted a charming little verse of Dr. Watts’s, beginning, “There is a dreadful Hell”

Lady Hainault might have been puzzled what to say, and Mary would not have helped her, for they had had an argument about that same hymn-book (Mary contending that one or two of the hymns were as well left alone at first), when Flora struck in and saved her aunt, by remarking,

“I shall save up my money and buy some jewels for Mary like aunt’s, so that when she stays down to dinner some of the men may fall in love with her, and marry her.”

“Pooh! you silly goose,” said Gus, “those jewels cost sixty million thousand pounds a-piece. I don’t want her to be married till I grow up, and then I shall marry her myself. Till then I shall buy her a yellow wig, like grandma Hainault’s, and then nobody will want to marry her.”

“Be quiet, Gus,” said Lady Hainault.

It was one thing to say “be quiet, Gus,” and it was another thing to make him hold his tongue. But, to do Gus justice, he was a good fellow, and never acted “enfant terrible ” but to the most select and private audience. Now he had begun: “I wish some one would marry grandma,” when the door was thrown open, the first guest was announced, and Gus was dumb.

“General Mainwaring.” The general sat down between Lady Hainault and Mary, and, while talking to them, reached out his broad brown hand and lifted the youngest boy on his knee, who played with his ribands, and cried out that he would have the orange and blue ne, if he pleased; while Gus and Flora came and stood at his knee.

He talked to them both sadly in a low voice about the ruin which had come on Lord Ascot. There was worse than mere ruin, he feared. He feared there was disgrace. He had been with him that morning. He was a wreck. One side of his face was sadly pulled down, and he stammered in his speech. He would get over it. He was only three-and-forty. But he would not show again in society, he feared. Here was somebody else; they would change the subject.

Lord Saltire. They were so glad to see him. Every one’s face had a kind smile on it as the old man came and sat down among them. His own smile was not the least pleasant of the lot, I warrant you.

“So you are talking about poor Ascot, eh?” he said. “I don’t know whether you were or not; but, if you were, let us talk about something else. You see, my dear Miss Corby, that my prophecy to you on the terrace at Ravenshoe is falsified. I said they would not fight, and lo, they are as good as at it.”

They talked about the coming war, and Lord Hainault came in and j(jined them. Soon after another guest was announced.

Lady Ascot. She was dressed in dark grey silk, with her white hair simply parted under a plain lace cap. She looked so calm, so brave, so kind, so beautiful, as she came with firm strong step in at the door, that they one and all rose and came towards her. She ad always been loved by them all; how much more deeply was she loved now, when her bitter troubles had made her doubly sacred.

Lord Saltire gave her his arm, and she came and sat down among them with her hands calmly folded before her.

“I was determined to come and see you tonight, my dear,” she said. “I should break down if I couldn’t see some that I loved. And tonight, in particular” (she looked earnestly at Lord Saltire). “Is he come yet?”

“Not yet, dear grandma,” said Mary.

“No one is coming besides, I suppose?” asked Lady Ascot.

“No one; we are waiting for him.”

The door was opened once more, and they all looked curiously round. This time the servant announced, perhaps in a somewhat louder tone than usual, as if he were aware that they were more interested,

“Mr. Ravenshoe.”

A well-dressed, gentlemanly-looking man came into the room, bearing such a wonderful likeness to Charles Ravenshoe, that Lady Hainault and General Mainwaring, the only two who had never seen him before, started, and thought they saw Charles himself It was not Charles, though; it was our old friend, William, whilom pad-groom to Charles Ravenshoe, Esquire, now himself “William Ravenshoe, Esquire, of Ravenshoe.

He was the guest of the evening. He would be heir to Ravenshoe himself some day; for they had made up their minds that Cuthbert would never marry. Ravenshoe, as Cuthbert was managing it now, would be worth ten or twelve thousand a year, and, if these new tin lodes came to anything, perhaps twenty. He had been a stable-helper, said old Lady Hainault — the companion of the drunken riots of his foster-brother impostor, and that quiet gentlemanly creature Welter. If he entered the house, she left it. To which young Lady Hainault had replied that some one must ask him to dinner in common decency, if it was only for the sake of that dear Charles, who had been loved by every one who knew him. That she intended to ask him to dinner, and that, if her dear mother-in-law objected to meet him, why the remedy lay with herself. Somebody must introduce him to some sort of society; and Lord Hainault and herself had made up their minds to do it, so that further argimient on the subject would be wasted breath. To which the Dowager replied that she really wished, after all, that Hainault had married that pretty chit of a thing, Adelaide Summers, as he was thinking of doing; as she, the Dowager, could not have been treated with greater insolence even by her, bold as she was. With which Parthian piece of spite she had departed to Casterton with. Miss Hicks, and had so goaded and snapped at that unfortunate reduced gentlewoman by the Nvay, that at last Hicks, as her wont was, had turned upon her and given her as good as she brought. If the Dowager could have heard Lady Hainault telling her lord the whole business that night, and joking with him about his alleged penchant for Adelaide and heard the jolly laugh that those two good souls had about it, her ladyship would have been more spiteful still.

But, nevertheless, Lady Hainault was very nervous about William. When Mary was consulted, she promptly went bail for his good behaviour, and pled his cause so warmly that the tears stood in her eyes. Her old friend William! What innocent plots she and he had hatched together against the prie............