Her enjoyment of these things was so frank and grateful that the Cupps counted them among their own joys.  Jane Cupp—­who knew something of dressmaking—­felt it a brilliant thing to be called upon to renovate an old dress or help in the making of a new one for some festivity.  The Cupps thought their tall, well-built lodger something of a beauty, and when they had helped her to dress for the evening, baring her fine, big white neck and arms, and adorning her thick braids of hair with some sparkling, trembling ornaments, after putting her in her four-wheeled cab, they used to go back to their kitchen and talk about her, and wonder that some gentleman who wanted a handsome, stylish woman at the head of his table, did not lay himself and his fortune at her feet.

“In the photograph-shops in Regent Street you see many a lady in a coronet that hasn’t half the good looks she has,” Mrs. Cupp remarked frequently.  “She’s got a nice complexion and a fine head of hair, and—­if you ask me—­she’s got as nice a pair of clear eyes as a lady could have.  Then look at her figure—­her neck and her waist!  That kind of big long throat of hers would set off rows of pearls or diamonds beautiful!  She’s a lady born, too, for all her simple, every-day way; and she’s a sweet creature, if ever there was one.  For kind-heartedness and good-nature I never saw her equal.”

Miss Fox-Seton had middle-class patrons as well as noble ones,—­in fact, those of the middle class were far more numerous than the duchesses,—­so it had been possible for her to do more than one good turn for the Cupp household.  She had got sewing in Maida Vale and Bloomsbury for Jane Cupp many a time, and Mrs. Cupp’s dining-room floor had been occupied for years by a young man Emily had been able to recommend.  Her own appreciation of good turns made her eager to do them for others.  She never let slip a chance to help any one in any way.

It was a good-natured thing done by one of her patrons who liked her, which made her so radiant as she walked through the mud this morning.  She was inordinately fond of the country, and having had what she called “a bad winter,” she had not seen the remotest chance of getting out of town at all during the summer months.  The weather was beginning to be unusually hot, and her small red room, which seemed so cosy in winter, was shut in by a high wall from all chance of breezes.  Occasionally she lay and panted a little in her cot, and felt that when all the private omnibuses, loaded with trunks and servants, had rattled away and deposited their burdens at the various stations, life in town would be rather lonely.  Every one she knew would have gone somewhere, and Mortimer Street in August was a melancholy thing.

And Lady Maria had actually invited her to Mallowe.  What a piece of good fortune-what an extraordinary piece of kindness!