It was very plain, however, that, though Mr Glascock did not like bright feathers for himself, he chose that his wife should wear them.  Nothing could be prettier than the way in which Caroline Spalding, whom we first saw as she was about to be stuck into the interior of the diligence at St. Michael, now filled her carriage as Lady Peterborough.  The greeting between them was very affectionate, and there was a kiss in the carriage, even though the two pretty hats, perhaps, suffered something.  ‘We are so glad to have you at last,’ said Lady Peterborough.  ’Of course we are very quiet; but you won’t mind that.’  Nora declared that no house could be too quiet for her, and then said something of the melancholy scene which she had just left.  ’And no time is fixed for your own marriage?  But of course it has not been possible.  And why should you be in a hurry?  We quite understand that this is to be your home till everything has arranged itself.’  There was a drive of four or five miles before they reached the park gates, and nothing could be kinder or more friendly than was the new peeress; but Nora told herself that there was no forgetting that her friend was a peeress.  She would not be so ill-conditioned as to suggest to herself that her friend patronised her and, indeed, had she done so, the suggestion would have been false; but she could not rid herself of a certain sensation of external inferiority, and of a feeling that the superiority ought to be on her side, as all this might have been hers only that she had not thought it worth her while to accept it.  As these ideas came into her mind, she hated herself for entertaining them; and yet, come they would.  While she was talking about her emblematic beef-steak with Hugh, she had no regret, no uneasiness, no conception that any state of life could be better for her than that state in which an emblematic beef-steak was of vital importance; but she could not bring her mind to the same condition of unalloyed purity while sitting with Lady Peterborough in Lord Peterborough’s carriage.  And for her default in this respect she hated herself.

‘This is the beginning of the park,’ said her friend.

‘And where is the house?’

’You can’t see the house for ever so far yet; it is two miles off.  There is about a mile before you come to the gates, and over a mile afterwards.  One has a sort of feeling when one is in that one can’t get out, it is so big.’  In so speaking, it was Lady Peterborough’s special endeavour to state without a boast facts which were indifferent, but which must be stated.

‘It is very magnificent,’ said Nora.  There was in her voice the slightest touch of sarcasm, which she would have given the world not to have uttered, but it had been irrepressible.

Lady Peterborough understood it instantly, and forgave it, not attributing to it more than its true meaning, acknowledging to herself that it was natural.  ‘Dear Nora,’ she said not knowing what to say, blushing as she spoke ’the magnificence is nothing; but the man’s love is everything.’