occasionally sent letters addressed "To the Right Honourable the
Countess of So-and-so," and received replies stamped with coronets. Once
even a letter had arrived adorned with strawberry-leaves, an incident
which Mrs. Cupp and Jane had discussed with deep interest over their hot
buttered-toast and tea.

Emily Fox-Seton, however, was far from making any professions of
grandeur. As time went on she had become fond enough of the Cupps to be
quite frank with them about her connections with these grand people. The
countess had heard from a friend that Miss Fox-Seton had once found her
an excellent governess, and she had commissioned her to find for her a
reliable young ladies' serving-maid. She had done some secretarial work
for a charity of which the duchess was patroness. In fact, these people
knew her only as a well-bred woman who for a modest remuneration would
make herself extremely useful in numberless practical ways. She knew
much more of them than they knew of her, and, in her affectionate
admiration for those who treated her with human kindness, sometimes
spoke to Mrs. Cupp or Jane of their beauty or charity with a very nice,
ingenuous feeling. Naturally some of her patrons grew fond of her, and
as she was a fine, handsome young woman with a perfectly correct
bearing, they gave her little pleasures, inviting her to tea or
luncheon, or taking her to the theatre.

Her enjoyment of these things was so frank and grateful that the Cupps
counted them among their own joys. Jane Cupp--who knew something of
dressmaking--felt it a brilliant thing to be called upon to renovate an
old dress or help in the making of a new one for some festivity. The
Cupps thought their tall, well-built lodger something of a beauty, and
when they had helped her to dress for the evening, baring her fine, big
white neck and arms, and adorning her thick braids of hair with some