It turned out to be a letter.  It was handed in at that moment, and was received by the mother without trembling hands or feverish eagerness, or any other of the manifestations common in the case of long delayed answers to imperative telegrams.  She polished her glasses with tranquility and thoroughness, pleasantly gossiping along, the while, then opened the letter and began to read aloud: 

                         Kenilworthkeep, REDGAUNTLET hall,
                         Rowena-Ivanhoe college, Thursday.

     Dear precious mamma Rossmore: 

Oh, the joy of it!—­you can’t think.  They had always turned up their noses at our pretentions, you know; and I had fought back as well as I could by turning up mine at theirs.  They always said it might be something great and fine to be rightful Shadow of an earldom, but to merely be shadow of a shadow, and two or three times removed at that—­pooh-pooh!  And I always retorted that not to be able to show four generations of American-Colonial-Dutch Peddler- and-Salt-Cod-McAllister-Nobility might be endurable, but to have to confess such an origin—­pfew-few!  Well, the telegram, it was just a cyclone!  The messenger came right into the great Rob Roy Hall of Audience, as excited as he could be, singing out, “Dispatch for Lady Gwendolen Sellers!” and you ought to have seen that simpering chattering assemblage of pinchbeck aristocrats, turn to stone!  I was off in the corner, of course, by myself—­it’s where Cinderella belongs.  I took the telegram and read it, and tried to faint—­and I could have done it if I had had any preparation, but it was all so sudden, you know—­but no matter, I did the next best thing:  I put my handkerchief to my eyes and fled sobbing to my room, dropping the telegram as I started.  I released one corner of my eye a moment—­ just enough to see the herd swarm for the telegram—­and then continued my broken-hearted flight just as happy as a bird.

Then the visits of condolence began, and I had to accept the loan of Miss Augusta-Templeton-Ashmore Hamilton’s quarters because the press was so great and there isn’t room for three and a cat in mine.  And I’ve been holding a Lodge of Sorrow ever since and defending myself against people’s attempts to claim kin.  And do you know, the very first girl to fetch her tears and sympathy to my market was that foolish Skimperton girl who has always snubbed me so shamefully and claimed lordship and precedence of the whole college because some ancestor of hers, some time or other, was a McAllister.  Why it was like the bottom bird in the menagerie putting on airs because its head ancestor was a pterodactyl.

But the ger-reatest triumph of all was—­guess.  But you’ll never.  This is it.  That little fool and two others have always been fussing and fretting over which was entitled to precedence—­by rank, you