girl.  An anxious mother could scarcely have regarded him with a greater desire to analyse his sentiments.  The match would be such a fitting one.  He would make such an excellent husband—­and there were three places, and the diamonds were magnificent.  Lady Maria had described to her a certain tiara which she frequently pictured to herself as glittering above Agatha’s exquisite low brow.  It would be infinitely more becoming to her than to Miss Brooke or Mrs. Ralph, though either of them would have worn it with spirit.  She could not help feeling that both Mrs. Ralph’s brilliancy and Miss Brooke’s insouciant prettiness were not unworthy of being counted in the running, but Lady Agatha seemed somehow so much more completely the thing wanted.  She was anxious that she should always look her best, and when she knew that disturbing letters were fretting her, and saw that they made her look pale and less luminous, she tried to raise her spirits.

“Suppose we take a brisk walk,” she would say, “and then you might try a little nap.  You look a little tired.”

“Oh,” said Agatha one day, “how kind you are to me!  I believe you actually care about my complexion—­about my looking well.”

“Lord Walderhurst said to me the other day,” was Emily’s angelically tactful answer, “that you were the only woman he had ever seen who always looked lovely.”

“Did he?” exclaimed Lady Agatha, and flushed sweetly.  “Once Sir Bruce Norman actually said that to me.  I told him it was the nicest thing that could be said to a woman.  It is all the nicer”—­with a sigh—­“because it isn’t really true.”

“I am sure Lord Walderhurst believed it true,” Emily said.  “He is not a man who talks, you know.  He is very serious and dignified.”  She had herself a reverence and admiration for Lord Walderhurst bordering on tender awe.  He was indeed a well-mannered person, of whom painful things were not said.  He also conducted himself well toward his tenantry, and was patron of several notable charities.  To the unexacting and innocently respectful mind of Emily Fox-Seton this was at once impressive and attractive.  She knew, though not intimately, many noble personages quite unlike him.  She was rather early Victorian and touchingly respectable.

“I have been crying,” confessed Lady Agatha.

“I was afraid so, Lady Agatha,” said Emily.

“Things are getting hopeless in Curzon Street.  I had a letter from Millicent this morning.  She is next in age to Alix, and she says—­oh, a number of things.  When girls see everything passing by them, it makes them irritable.  Millicent is seventeen, and she is too lovely.  Her hair is like a red-gold cloak, and her eyelashes are twice as long as mine.”  She sighed again, and her lips, which were like curved rose-petals, unconcealedly quivered.  “They were all so cross about Sir Bruce Norman going to India,” she added.

“He will come back,” said Emily, benignly; “but he may be too late.  Has he”—­ingenuously—­“seen Alix?”