"They sent for me, Lady Lovel, to bid me come to your ladyship and ask your ladyship whether you would consent to a marriage between the two young people." It was thus that the tailor repeated for the second time the message which had been confided to him, showing the gall and also the pride which were at work about his heart by the repeated titles which he gave to his old friend.

"They desire that Anna should marry the young lord!"

"Yes, my lady. That\'s the meaning of it."

"And what am I to be?"

"Just the Countess Lovel,—with a third of the property as your own. I suppose it would be a third; but you might trust the lawyers to settle that properly. When once they take your daughter among them they won\'t scrimp you in your honours. They\'ll all swear that the marriage was good enough then. They know that already, and have made this offer because they know it. Your ladyship needn\'t fear now but what all the world will own you as the Countess Lovel. I don\'t suppose I\'ll be troubled to come up to London any more."

"Oh, my friend!" The ejaculation she made feeling the necessity of saying something to soothe the tailor\'s pride; but her heart was fixed upon the fruition of that for which she had spent so many years in struggling. Was it to come to her at last? Could it be that now, now at once, people throughout the world would call her the Countess Lovel, and would own her daughter to be the Lady Anna,—till she also should become a countess? Of the young man she had heard nothing but good, and it was impossible that she should have fear in that direction, even had she been timorous by nature. But she was bold and eager, hopeful in spite of all that she had suffered, full of ambition, and not prone to feminine scruples. She had been fighting all her life in order that she and her daughter might be acknowledged to be among the aristocrats of her country. She was so far a loving, devoted mother that in all her battles she thought more of her child than of herself. She would have consented to carry on the battle in poverty to the last gasp of her own breath, could she thereby have insured success for her surviving daughter. But she was not a woman likely to be dismayed at the idea of giving her girl in marriage to an absolute stranger, when that stranger was such a one as the young Earl Lovel. She herself had been a countess, but a wretched, unacknowledged, poverty-stricken countess, for the last half of her eventful life. This marriage would make her daughter a countess, prosperous, accepted by all, and very wealthy. What better end could there be to her long struggles? Of course she would assent.

"I don\'t know why they should have troubled themselves to send for me," said the tailor.

"Because you are the best friend that I have in the world. Whom else could I have trusted as I do you? Has the Earl agreed to it?"

"They didn\'t tell me that, my lady."

"They would hardly have sent, unless he had agreed. Don\'t you think so, Mr. Thwaite?"

"I don\'t know much about such things, my lady."

"You have told—Daniel?"

"No, my lady."

"Oh, Mr. Thwaite, do not talk to me in that way. It sounds as though you were deserting me."

"There\'ll be no reason for not deserting now. You\'ll have friends by the score more fit to see you through this than old Thomas Thwaite. And, to own the truth, now that the matter is coming to an end, I am getting weary of it. I\'m not so young as I was, and I\'d be better left at home to my business."

"I hope that you may disregard your business now without imprudence, Mr. Thwaite."

"No, my lady;—a man should always stick to his business. I hope that Daniel will do so better than his father before him,—so that his son may never have to go out to be servant to another man."

"You are speaking daggers to me."

"I have not meant it then. I am rough by nature, I know, and perhaps a little low just at present. There is something sad in the parting of old friends."

"Old friends needn\'t be parted, Mr. Thwaite."

"When your ladyship was good enough to point out to me my boy\'s improper manner of speech to Lady Anna, I knew how it must be. You were quite right, my lady. There can be no becoming friendship between the future Lady Lovel and a journeyman tailor. I was wrong from the beginning."

"Oh, Mr. Thwaite! without such wrong where should we have been?"

"There can be no holding ground of friendship between such as you and such as we. Lords and ladies, earls and countesses, are our enemies, and we are theirs. We may make their robes and take their money, and deal with them as the Jew dealt with the Christians in the play; but we cannot eat with them or drink with them."

"How often have I eaten and drank at your table, when no other table was spread for me?"

"You were a Jew almost as ourselves then. We cannot now well stand shoulder to shoulder and arm to arm as friends should do."

"How often has my child lain in your arms when she was a baby, and been quieter there than she would be even in her mother\'s?"

"That has all gone by. Other arms will be open to receive her." As the tailor said this he remembered how his boy used to take the little child out to the mountain side, and how the two would ramble away together through the long summer evenings; and he reflected that the memory of those days was no doubt still strong in the heart of his son. Some shadow of the grief which would surely fall upon the young man now fell upon the father, and caused him almost to repent of the work of his life. "Tailors should consort with tailors," he said, "and lords and ladies should consort together."

Something of the same feeling struck the Countess also. If it were not for the son, the father, after all that he had done for them, might be almost as near and as dear to them as ever. He might have called the Lady Anna by her Christian name, at any rate till she had been carried away as a bride by the Earl. But, though all this was so exquisitely painful, it had been absolutely necessary to check the son. "Ah, well," she said; "it is hardly to be hoped that so many crooked things should be made straight without much pain. If you knew, Mr. Thwaite, how little it is that I expect for myself!"

"It is because I have known it that I am here."

"It will be well for her,—will it not,—to be the wife of her cousin?"

"If he be a good man. A woman will not always make herself happy by marrying an Earl."

"How many daggers you can use, Mr. Thwaite! But this young man is good. You yourself have said that you have heard so."

"I have heard nothing to the contrary, my lady."

"And what shall I do?"

"Just explain it all to Lady Anna. I think it will be clear then."

"You believe that she will be so easily pleased?"

"Why should she not be pleased? She\'ll have some maiden scruples, doubtless. What maid would not? But she\'ll exult at such an end to all her troubles;—and what maid would not? Let them meet as soon as may be and have it over. When he shall have placed the ring on her finger, your battle will have been won."

Then the tailor felt that his commission was done and he might take his leave. It had been arranged that in the event of the Countess consenting to the proposed marriage, he should call upon Mr. Flick to explain that it was so. Had she dissented, a short note would have been sufficient. Had such been the case, the Solicitor-General would have instigated the young lord to go and try what he himself could do with the Countess and her daughter. The tailor had suggested to the mother that she should at once make the proposition known to Lady Anna, but the Countess felt that one other word was necessary as her old friend left her. "Will you go back at once to Keswick, Mr. Thwaite?"

"To-morrow morning, my lady."

"Perhaps you will not tell your son of this,—yet?"

"No, my lady. I will not tell my son of this,—yet. My son is high-minded and stiff-necked, and of great heart. If he saw aught to object to in this marriage, it might be that he would express himself loudly." Then the tailor took his leave without even shaking hands with the Countess.

The woman sat alone for the next two hours, thinking of what had passed. There had sprung up in these days a sort of friendship between Mrs. Bluestone and the two Miss Bluestones and the Lady Anna, arising rather from the fo............