CHAPTER X.

"Souvent femme varie;
Bien fol est, qui s'y fie."


We sat by the firelight in the old library of Kerton Manor. The dreary
January evening was closing in, with a sharp sleet lashing the windows
and rattling on their diamond panes, but the gleams from the great
burning logs lighted up the dark crimson cushions of Utrecht and the
polished walnut panels so changefully and enticingly that no one had the
heart to think of candles.

All the younger members of the party were assembled there, with Mrs.
Bellasys to play propriety. It was her mission to be chaperon in
ordinary to her daughter and her daughter's friends, and she went
through with it, admirable in her patient self-denial. May they be
reckoned to her credit hereafter--those long hours, when she sat sleepy,
weary, uncomplaining, with an aching head but a stereotyped smile.

Let us speak gently of these maternal martyrs, manoeuvring though they
be. If they have erred, they have suffered. I knew once a lady with a
lot of six, nubile, but not attractive, all with a decided bias toward
Terpsichore and Hymen. Fancy what she must have endured, with those
plain young women round her, always clamoring for partners, temporary or
permanent, like fledglings in a nest for food. Clever and unscrupulous
as she was--they called her the "judicious Hooker"--she must have been
conscious of her utter inability to satisfy them. She knew, too, that
if, by any dispensation, one were removed, five daughters of the