“She talks a good deal about her husband.  It is a comfort to her to find someone to listen.  She thinks he is a god.  But we principally talk about—­me.”

“Don’t discourage her,” laughed Osborn.  “Perhaps she will get so fond of you that she will not be willing to part with us, as she will be obliged to take both to keep one.”

“I wish she would, I wish she would!” sighed Hester, tossing up her hands in a languid, yet fretted gesture.

The contrast between herself and this woman was very often too great to be equably borne.  Even her kindness could not palliate it.  The simple perfection of her country clothes, the shining skins of her horses, the smooth roll of her carriage, the automatic servants who attended her, were suggestive of that ease and completeness in all things, only to be compassed by long-possessed wealth.  To see every day the evidences of it while one lived on charitable sufferance on the crumbs which fell from the master’s table was a galling enough thing, after all.  It would always have been galling.  But it mattered so much more now—­so much more to Hester than she had known it could matter even in those days when as a girl she had thirstily longed for it.  In those days she had not lived near enough to it all to know the full meaning and value of it—­the beauty and luxury, the stateliness and good taste.  To have known it in this way, to have been almost part of it and then to leave it, to go back to a hugger-mugger existence in a wretched bungalow hounded by debt, pinched and bound hard and fast by poverty, which offered no future prospect of bettering itself into decent good luck!  Who could bear it?

Both were thinking the same thing as their eyes met.

“How are we to stand it, after this?” she cried out sharply.

“We can’t stand it,” he answered.  “Confound it all, something must happen.”

“Nothing will,” she said; “nothing but that we shall go back worse off than before.”

* * * * *

At this period Lady Walderhurst went to London again to shop, and spent two entire happy days in buying beautiful things of various kinds, which were all to be sent to Mrs. Osborn at The Kennel Farm, Palstrey.  She had never enjoyed herself so much in her life as she did during those two days when she sat for hours at one counter after another looking at exquisite linen and flannel and lace.  The days she had spent with Lady Maria in purchasing her trousseau had not compared with these two.  She looked actually lovely as she almost fondled the fine fabrics, smiling with warm softness at the pretty things shown her.  She spent, in fact, good deal of money, and luxuriated in so doing as she tfould never have luxuriated in spending it in finery for herself.  Nothing indeed seemed too fairy-like in its fineness, no quantity of lace seemed in excess.  Her heart positively trembled in her breast sometimes, and she found strange tears rising in her eyes.