“You know she’s an heiress,” said Lady Tyrrell.  “You had better take care how you put such a temptation in his way.”

“I don’t suppose the Moys are anybody,” said Cecil.

“Not in your sense, my dear,” said Lady Tyrrell, laughing; “but from another level there’s a wide gap between the heiress of Proudfoot Lawn and the heir of the training stables.”

“Cecil looks simply disgusted,” said Bessie.  “She can’t bear the Moys betwixt the wind and her nobility.”

“They are the great drawback to Swansea, I confess,” said Cecil.

“Oh! are you thinking of Swanslea?” cried Mrs Duncombe.

“Yes,” said Lady Tyrrell, “she is one to be congratulated on emancipation.”

“Well can I do so,” said Mrs. Duncombe.  “Don’t I know what mothers-in-law are?  Mine is the most wonderful old Goody, with exactly the notions of your meek Mrs. Miles.”

“Incompatibility decidedly,” said Lady Tyrrell.

“Only she was the Spartan mother combined with it,” continued Mrs. Duncombe.  “When Bob was a little urchin, he once, in anticipation of his future tastes, committed the enormity of riding on a stick on Sunday; so she locked him up till he had learnt six verses of one of Watts’s hymns about going to church being like a little heaven below, isn’t it?”

“Increasing his longing that way,” said Lady Tyrrell.

“She doesn’t even light the drawing-room fire on Sunday, for fear people should not sit in their rooms and meditate,” continued Mrs. Duncombe.  “Bob manages to be fond of her through all; but she regularly hates me.”

“Not very wonderful,” said Lady Tyrrell, laughing.  “I suppose there is a charming reciprocity of feeling.”

“I think I can afford to pity her,” said Mrs. Duncombe, lightly.  “Just fancy what I must have been to her!  You know I was brought up in a convent at Paris.  The very bosom of the scarlet woman.”

“But,” interrupted Cecil, “you were never a Roman Catholic, Bessie!”

“Oh dear, no; the Protestant boarders were let entirely alone.  There were only two of us, and we lay in bed while the others went to mass, and played while they went to confession, that was all.  I was an orphan; never remember my mother, and my father died abroad.  Luckily for me, Bob was done for by my first ball.  Very odd he should have liked a little red-haired thing like me; but every one is ticketed, I believe.  My uncle was glad enough to get rid of me, and poor old Mrs. Duncombe was unsuspecting till we went home—­and then!”

“And then?”

“Cecil may have some faint idea.”

“Of what you underwent?”

“She wanted to begin on me as if I were a wild savage heathen, you know!  I believe she nearly had a fit when I declined a prayer-meeting, and as to my walking out with Bob on Sunday evening!”

“Did she make you learn Watts’s hymns?”

“No! but she did what was much worse to poor Bob.  She told him she had spent the time in prayer and humiliation, and the poor fellow very nearly cried.”