“I do hope not, mamma,” Bertha said, indignantly.  “I don’t mean to say that it might not be better to marry, as you say, a peer with a good rent roll than a younger son without a penny, other things being equal; that is to say, if one liked them equally; but I hope that I shall never come to like anyone a bit more for being a peer.”

Lady Greendale smiled, indulgently.

“It is a natural sentiment, my dear, for a girl of your age and inexperience; but in time you will come to see things in a different light.”

Then she changed the subject.  “What is Frank going to do?  It is fortunate that we are going up to town next week.”

“He is going up to town himself tomorrow, and I am sure that you will never hear from him, or from anyone else, what has happened.  We shall meet in town as usual, and I am sure that he will be just the same as he was before, and that I shall be a great deal more uncomfortable than he will.  It is a very silly affair altogether, I think; and I would give anything if it had not happened.”

Lady Greendale did not echo the sentiment.  She liked Frank Mallett immensely.  He had always been a great favourite of hers, but since she had guessed what Bertha herself had not dreamed of, she had been uncomfortable.  It threatened to disturb all the plans she had formed, and she was well contented to learn that she had refused him.  Lady Greendale was a thoroughly kind-hearted woman, but she could not forget that she herself might have made, in a worldly sense, a better match than she had; and her ambition had, since Bertha was a child, and still more since she had shown promise of exceptional good looks, been centred on her making a really good match.

Frank went up to town next day, and the Greendales followed him a week later.  They did not often meet him in society, as Frank seldom went out; but he called occasionally in the old friendly and unceremonious way.  It would have required an acute observer to see any difference in his manner to Bertha, but Lady Greendale noticed it, and the girl herself felt that, although he was no less kind and friendly, there was some impalpable change in his manner, something that she felt, though she could not define it, even to herself.

“Have you had a tiff with Major Mallett, Bertha?” Mrs. Wilson asked one day, when she was alone with her in the drawing room.

Frank had just left, after spending an hour there.

“A tiff, Carrie?  No!  What put such an idea into your head?”

“My eyes, assisted perhaps by my ears.  My dear, do you think that after being with you on the yacht last autumn, I should not notice any change in your manner to each other?  I had expected before now to have heard an interesting piece of news; and now I see that things have gone wrong somehow.”

“We are just as good friends as we always were,” Bertha said, shortly; “every bit.”

“You don’t mean to say that you have refused him, Bertha?”