The wheels were not out of sight of the house before the attack on the Trefoils began.  “I had heard of Lady Augustus before,” said Lady Penwether, “but I didn’t think that any woman could be so disagreeable.”

“So vulgar,” said Miss Penge.

“Wasn’t she the daughter of an ironmonger?” asked the elder Miss Godolphin.

“The girl of course is handsome,” said Lady Penwether.

“But so self-sufficient,” said Miss Godolphin.

“And almost as vulgar as her mother,” said Miss Penge.

“She may be clever,” said Lady Penwether, “but I do not think I should ever like her.”

“She is one of those girls whom only gentlemen like,” said Miss Penge.

“And whom they don’t like very long,” said Lady Penwether.

“How well I understand all this,” said Lord Rufford turning to the younger Miss Godolphin.  “It is all said for my benefit, and considered to be necessary because I danced with the young lady last night.”

“I hope you are not attributing such a motive to me,” said Miss Penge.

“Or to me,” said Miss Godolphin.

“I look on both of you and Eleanor as all one on the present occasion.  I am considered to be falling over a precipice, and she has got hold of my coat tails.  Of course you wouldn’t be Christians if you didn’t both of you seize a foot”

“Looking at it in that light I certainly wish to be understood as holding on very fast,” said Miss Penge.

CHAPTER XXVI

Give me six Months

There was a great deal of trouble and some very genuine sorrow in the attorney’s house at Dillsborough during the first week in December.  Mr. Masters had declared to his wife that Mary should go to Cheltenham and a letter was written to Lady Ushant accepting the invitation.  The twenty pounds too was forthcoming and the dress and the boots and the hat were bought.  But while this was going on Mrs. Masters took care that there should be no comfort whatever around them and made every meal a separate curse to the unfortunate lawyer.  She told him ten times a day that she had been a mother to his daughter, but declared that such a position was no longer possible to her as the girl had been taken altogether out of her hands.  To Mary she hardly spoke at all and made her thoroughly wish that Lady Ushant’s kindness had been declined.  “Mamma,” she said one day, “I had rather write now and tell her that I cannot come.”

“After all the money has been wasted!”

“I have only got things that I must have had very soon.”

“If you have got anything to say you had better talk to your father.  I know nothing about it”

“You break my heart when you say that, mamma.”

“You think nothing about breaking mine;—­or that young man’s who is behaving so well to you.  What makes me mad is to see you shilly-shallying with him.”