‘But of course she is going,’ said Lady Rowley.

‘Of course she will some day, and of course she’ll like it,’ said Miss Spalding.  ‘We both of us have been there already.’

‘But I mean Monkhams,’ said Lady Rowley, still simpering.

’I declare I believe mamma thinks that your sister is to be married to Mr Glascock!’ said Lucy.

‘And so she is, isn’t she?’ said Lady Rowley.

‘Oh, mamma!’ said Nora, jumping up.  ’It is Caroline, this one, this one, this one,’ and Nora took her friend by the arm as she spoke ’it is this one that is to be Mrs Glascock.’

‘It is a most natural mistake to make,’ said Caroline.  Lady Rowley became very red in the face, and was unhappy.  ‘I declare,’ she said, ‘that they told me it was your elder sister.’

‘But I have no elder sister,’ said Caroline, laughing.  ’Of course she is oldest,’ said Nora ’and looks to be so, ever so much.  Don’t you, Miss Spalding?’

‘I have always supposed so.’

‘I don’t understand it at all,’ said Lady Rowley, who had no image before her mind’s eye but that of Wallachia Petrie, and who was beginning to feel that she had disgraced her own judgment by the criticisms she had expressed everywhere as to Mr Glascock’s bride.  ’I don’t understand it at all.  Do you mean that both your sisters are younger than you, Miss Spalding?’

‘I have only got one, Lady Rowley.’

‘Mamma, you are thinking of Miss Petrie,’ said Nora, clapping both her hands together.

‘I mean the lady that wears the black bugles.’

’Of course you do, Miss Petrie.  Mamma has all along thought that Mr Glascock was going to carry away with him the republican Browning!’

‘Oh, mamma, how can you have made such a blunder!’ said Sophie Rowley.  ‘Mamma does make such delicious blunders.’

‘Sophie, my dear, that is not a proper way of speaking.’

‘But, dear mamma, don’t you?’

‘If somebody has told me wrong, that has not been my fault,’ said Lady Rowley.

The poor woman was so evidently disconcerted that Caroline Spalding was quite unhappy.

’My dear Lady Rowley, there has been no fault.  And why shouldn’t it have been so.  Wallachia is so clever, that it is the most natural thing in the world to have thought.’

‘I cannot say that I agree with you there,’ said Lady Rowley, somewhat recovering herself.

‘You must know the whole truth now,’ said Nora, turning to her friend, ’and you must not be angry with us if we laugh a little at your poetess.  Mamma has been frantic with Mr Glascock because he has been going to marry—­whom shall I say—­her edition of you.  She has sworn that he must be insane.  When we have sworn how beautiful you were, and how nice, and how jolly, and all the rest of it she has sworn that you were at least a hundred and that you had a red nose.  You must admit that Miss Petrie has a red nose.’