that Lady Maria’s intention was to keep her.  The scene between the three was far too subtle to be of the least use upon the stage, but it was a good scene, nevertheless.  Its expression was chiefly, perhaps, a matter of inclusion and exclusion, and may also have been largely telepathic; but after it was over, Lady Maria chuckled several times softly to herself, like an elderly bird of much humour, and Lady Malfry went home feeling exceedingly cross.

She was in so perturbed a humour that she dropped her eyelids and looked rather coldly down the bridge of her nose when her stupidly cheery little elderly husband said to her,—­

“Well, Geraldine?”

“I beg pardon,” she replied.  “I don’t quite understand.”

“Of course you do.  How about Emily Fox-Seton?”

“She seems very well, and of course she is well satisfied.  It would not be possible for her to be otherwise.  Lady Maria Bayne has taken her up.”

“She is Walderhurst’s cousin.  Well, well!  It will be an immense position for the girl.”

“Immense,” granted Lady Malfry, with a little flush.  A certain tone in her voice conveyed that discussion was terminated.  Sir George knew that her niece was not coming to them and that the immense position would include themselves but slightly.

Emily was established temporarily at South Audley Street with Jane Cupp as her maid.  She was to be married from Lady Maria’s lean old arms, so to speak.  Her ladyship derived her usual epicurean enjoyment from the whole thing,—­from too obviously thwarted mothers and daughters; from Walderhurst, who received congratulations with a civilly inexpressive countenance which usually baffled the observer; from Emily, who was overwhelmed by her emotions, and who was of a candour in action such as might have appealed to any heart not adapted by the flintiness of its nature to the macadamising of roads.

If she had not been of the most unpretentious nice breeding and unaffected taste, Emily might have been ingenuously funny in her process of transformation.

“I keep forgetting that I can afford things,” she said to Lady Maria.  “Yesterday I walked such a long way to match a piece of silk, and when I was tired I got into a penny bus.  I did not remember until it was too late that I ought to have called a hansom.  Do you think,” a shade anxiously, “that Lord Walderhurst would mind?”

“Just for the present, perhaps, it would be as well that I should see that you shop in the carriage,” her ladyship answered with a small grin.  “When you are a marchioness you may make penny buses a feature of the distinguished insouciance of your character if you like.  I shouldn’t myself, because they jolt and stop to pick up people, but you can, with originality and distinction, if it amuses you.”

“It doesn’t,” said Emily.  “I hate them.  I have longed to be able to take hansoms.  Oh! how I have longed—­when I was tired.”