“Hartledon—­dear me!  I wonder how long I shall be getting accustomed to your name?—­there’s only you and me and Maude left now of the family,” cried the dowager; “and if I speak of such things, it is in fulness of heart.  And now about these letters:  do you care how they are worded?”

“I don’t seem to care about anything,” listlessly answered the young man.  “As to the letters, I think I’d rather write them myself, Lady Kirton.”

“Indeed you shall not have any trouble of that sort to-day. I’ll write the letters, and you may indulge yourself in doing nothing.”

He yielded in his unstable nature.  She spoke of business letters, and it was better that he should write them; he wished to write them; but she carried her point, and his will yielded to hers.  Would it be a type of the future?—­would he yield to her in other things in defiance of his better judgment?  Alas! alas!

She picked up her skirts and left him, and went sailing upstairs to her daughter’s room.  Maude was sitting shivering in a shawl, though the day was hot.

“I’ve paved the way,” nodded the old woman, in meaning tones.  “And there’s one fortunate thing about Val:  he is so truthful himself, one may take him in with his eyes open.”

Maude turned her eyes upon her mother:  very languid and unspeculative eyes just then.

“I gave him a hint, Maude, that you had been unable to bring yourself to like Hartledon, but had fixed your mind on a younger son.  Later, we’ll let him suspect who the younger son was.”

The words aroused Maude; she started up and stood staring at her mother, her eyes dilating with a sort of horror; her pale cheeks slowly turning crimson.

“I don’t understand,” she gasped; “I hope I don’t understand.  You—­you do not mean that I am to try to like Val Elster?”

“Now, Maude, no heroics.  I’ll not see you make a fool of yourself as your sisters have done.  He’s not Val Elster any longer; he is Lord Hartledon:  better-looking than ever his brother was, and will make a better husband, for he’ll be more easily led.”

“I would not marry Val for the whole world,” she said, with strong emotion.  “I dislike him; I hate him; I never could be a wife to Val Elster.”

“We’ll see,” said the dowager, pushing up her front, of which she had just caught sight in a glass.

“Thank Heaven, there’s no fear of it!” resumed Maude, collecting her senses, and sitting down again with a relieved sigh; “he is to marry Anne Ashton.  Thank Heaven that he loves her!”

“Anne Ashton!” scornfully returned the countess-dowager.  “She might have been tolerated when he was Val Elster, not now he is Lord Hartledon.  What notions you have, Maude!”

Maude burst into tears.  “Mamma, I think it is fearfully indecent for you to begin upon these things already!  It only happened last night, and—­and it sounds quite horrible.”