down in her girlhood, because of her eyes and her striking air and excellent deportment, as mate for a nobleman, marries, him before she is out of her teens.  “I said, She shall be a countess.”  A countess she is.  Providence does not comply with our predictions in order to stultify us.  Admitting the position of affairs for the moment as extraordinary, we are bound by what has happened to expect they will be conformable in the end.  Temporarily warped, we should say of them.

She could point to the reason:  it was Lord Ormont’s blunt misunderstanding of her character.  The burgess’s daughter was refining to an appreciation of the exquisite so rapidly that she could criticize patricians.  My lord had never forgiven her for correcting him in his pronunciation of her name by marriage.  Singular indeed; but men, even great men, men of title, are so, some of them, whom you could least suspect of their being so.  He would speak the “g” in Nargett, and he, declined—­after a remonstrance he declined—­to pass Pagnell under the cedilla.  Lord Ormont spoke the name like a man hating it, or an English rustic:  “Nargett Pagnell,” instead, of the soft and elegant “Naryett Pagnell,” the only true way of speaking it; and she had always taken that pronunciation of her name for a test of people’s breeding.  The expression of his lordship’s countenance under correction was memorable.  Naturally, in those honeymoony days, the young Countess of Ormont sided with her husband the earl; she declared that her aunt had never dreamed of the cedilla before the expedition to Spain.  When, for example, Alfred Nargett Pagnell had a laughing remark, which Aminta in her childhood must have heard:  “We rhyme with spaniel!”

That was the secret of Lord Ormont’s prepossession against Aminta’s aunt; and who can tell? perhaps of much of his behaviour to the beautiful young wife he at least admired, sincerely admired, though he caused her to hang her head—­cast a cloud on the head so dear to him!

Otherwise there was no interpreting his lordship.  To think of herself as personally disliked by a nobleman stupefied Mrs. Pagnell, from her just expectation of reciprocal dealings in high society; for she confessed herself a fly to a title.  Where is the shame, if titles are created to attract?  Elsewhere than in that upper circle, we may anticipate hard bargains; the widow of a solicitor had not to learn it.  But when a distinguished member and ornament of the chosen seats above blew cold upon their gesticulatory devotee, and was besides ungrateful; she was more than commonly assured of his being, as she called him, “a sphinx.”  His behaviour to his legally wedded wife confirmed the charge.

She checked her flow to resume the question.  “So, then, where are we now?  He allows you liberally for pin-money in addition to your own small independent income.  Satisfaction with that would warrant him to suppose his whole duty done by you.”