In forty-eight hours, even, of comfort and cosseting her elfish thinness had become a shade less ghastly; and the self-possession which had emerged from the state of collapse in which she had arrived amazed Victoria.  A week before, so it appeared, she had been earning a franc a day in the vineyard of a friendly contadino.  And already one might have thought her bred in castles.  She was not abashed or bewildered by the luxuries of Duddon, as Netta clearly was.  Rather, she seemed to seize greedily and by a natural instinct upon all that came her way—­motors, pretty frocks, warm baths in luxurious bathrooms, and the attentions of Victoria’s maid.  Victoria believed that she had grasped the whole situation with regard to Threlfall.  She was quite aware, it seemed, of the magnitude of her father’s wealth; of all that hung upon her own chances of inheritance; and of the value, to her cause and her mother’s, of the support of Duddon.  Her likeness to her father came out hour by hour, and there were moments when the tiny creature carried herself like a Melrose in miniature.

Victoria’s advent was awaited at Green Cottage, she having telephoned to Mrs. Penfold in the morning, with something of a flutter.  Her visits there had not been frequent; and this was the first time she had called since Tatham’s proposal to Lydia.  That event had never been avowed by Lydia, as we have seen, even to her mother; Lydia and Victoria had never exchanged a word on the subject.  But Lydia was aware of the shrewd guessing of her family, and she did not suppose for one moment that Lady Tatham was ignorant of anything that had happened.

Mrs. Penfold, scarcely kept in order by Susy, was in much agitation.  She felt terribly guilty.  Lady Tatham must think them all monsters of ingratitude, and she wondered how she could be so kind as to come and see them at all.  She became at last so incoherent and tearful that Lydia prepared for the worst, while Susy, the professed psychologist, revelled in the prospect of new “notes.”

But when Victoria arrived, entering the cottage drawing-room with her fine mannish face, her stately bearing, and her shabby clothes, the news she brought seized at once on Mrs. Penfold’s wandering wits, and for the moment held them fast.  For Victoria, whose secret object was to discover, if she could, any facts about Lydia’s doings and feelings during the interval of separation, that might throw light upon her Harry’s predicament, made it cunningly appear that she had come expressly to tell her neighbours of the startling event which was now agitating Duddon, as it would soon be agitating the countryside.

Mrs. Penfold—­steeped in long years of three-decker fiction—­sat entranced.  The cast-off and ill-treated wife returning to the scene of her misery—­with the heiress!—­grown up—­and beautiful:  she saw it all; she threw it all into the moulds dear to the sentimentalist.  Victoria demurred to the adjective “beautiful”; suggesting “pretty—­when we have fed her!” But Mrs. Penfold, with soft, shining eyes, already beheld the mother and child weeping at the knees of the Ogre, the softening of the Ogre’s heart, the opening of the grim Tower to its rightful heiress, the happy ending, the marriage gown in the distance.