“You are on the side of the poor man, then, Mrs. Chiverton?” said Mr. Forbes pleasantly.  “It is certainly a legitimate sphere of female influence in country neighborhoods.”

The stately bride drew her splendid dress aside to make room for him on the ottoman, and replied in a measured voice, “I am.  I tell Mr. Chiverton that he does not satisfy the reasonable expectations of his people.  I hope to persuade him to a more liberal policy of management on his immense estates; his revenue from them is very large.  It distresses me to be surrounded by a discontented tenantry, as it would do to be waited on by discontented servants.  A bad cottage is an eyesore on a rich man’s land, and I shall not rest until I get all Chiver-Chase cleared of bad cottages and picturesquely inconvenient old farmsteads.  The people appeal to me already.”

Bessie Fairfax had come up while her old school-fellow was gratifying Mr. Forbes’s ears with her admirable sentiments.  She could not forbear a smile at the candid assertion of power they implied, and as Mr. Forbes smiled too with a twinkle of amused surprise, Bessie said sportively, “And if Mr. Chiverton is rebellious and won’t take them away, then what shall you do?”

Mrs. Chiverton was dumb; perhaps this probability had not occurred to her ruling mind.  Mr. Forbes begged to know what Miss Fairfax herself would do under such circumstances.  Bessie considered a minute with her pretty chin in the air, and then said, “I would not wear my diamonds.  Oh, I would find out a way to bring him to reason!”

A delicate color suffused Mrs. Chiverton’s face, and she looked proudly at Bessie, standing in her bright freedom before her.  Bessie caught her breath; she saw that she had given pain, and was sorry:  “You don’t care for my nonsense—­you remember me at school,” she whispered, and laid her hand impulsively on the slim folded hands of the young married lady.

“I remember that you found something to laugh at in almost everything—­it is your way,” said Mrs. Chiverton coldly, and as her flush subsided she appeared paler than before.  She was so evidently hurt by something understood or imagined in Bessie’s innocent raillery that Bessie, abashed herself, drew back her hand, and as Mr. Forbes began to speak with becoming seriousness she took the opportunity of gliding away to join Miss Burleigh in the glazed verandah.

It was a dark, warm night, but the moon that was rising above the trees gradually illumined it, and made the garden mysterious with masses of shadow, black against the silver light.  In the distance rose the ghostly towers of the cathedral.  Miss Burleigh feared that the grass was too wet for them to walk upon it, but they paced the verandah until Mr. Cecil Burleigh found them and the rising hum of conversation in the drawing-room announced the appearance of the other gentlemen.  Miss Burleigh then went back to the company, and there was an opportunity for kind words