‘Has he got anything of his own?’

’Not much I should say.  If he had had any money he would have married Lady Mab Grex last year.’

Lady Cantrip was inclined from what she now learned to think that the Duke must be wrong about the young man.  But before Lady Mary joined her she made further inquiry.  She too knew Lady Mabel, and knowing Lady Mabel, she knew Miss Cassewary.  She contrived to find herself alone with Miss Cassewary, and asked some further questions about Mr Tregear.  ‘He’s a cousin of my Lord’s,’ said Miss Cass.

’So I thought.  I wonder what sort of young man he is.  He is a good deal with Lord Silverbridge.’

Then Miss Cassewary spoke her opinion very plainly.  ’If Lord Silverbridge has nobody worse about him than Mr Tregear he would not come to much harm.’

‘I suppose he’s not very well off?’

’No;—­certainly not.  He will have a property of some kind, I believe, when his mother dies.  I think very well of Mr Tregear;—­ only I wish that he had a profession.  But why are you asking about him, Lady Cantrip?’

’Nidderdale was talking to me about him and saying that he was so much with Lord Silverbridge.  Lord Silverbridge is going into Parliament now, and, as it were, beginning the world, and it would be a thousand pities that he should get into bad hands.’  It may, however, be doubted whether Miss Cassewary was hoodwinked by this little story.

Early in the second week of May the Duke brought his daughter up to The Horns, and at the same time expressed his intention of remaining in London.  When he did so Lady Mary at once asked whether she might not be with him, but he would not permit it.  The house in London would, he said, be more gloomy even than Matching.

‘I am quite ashamed of giving so much trouble,’ Lady Mary said to her new friend.

‘We are delighted to have you, my dear.’

’But I know you have been obliged to leave London because I am with you.’

’There is nothing I like so much as this place, which your father has been kind enough to lend us.  As for London, there is nothing now to make me like being there.  Both my girls are married, and therefore I regard myself as an old woman who has done her work.  Don’t you think this place very much nicer than London at this time of the year?’

’I don’t know London at all.  I had only just been brought out when poor mamma want abroad.’

The life they led was very quiet, and most probably have been felt to be dull by Lady Cantrip, in spite of her old age and desire for retirement.  But the place itself was very lovely.  May of all the months of the year is in England the most insidious, the most dangerous, and the most inclement.  A greatcoat can not be endured, and without a greatcoat who can endure a May wind and live?  But of all months it is the prettiest.  The grasses are then the greenest, and the young foliage of the trees,