your notice?"

I replied that I had met with the "bold girl" purely by accident, on her
side as well as on mine; and then I started a new topic. "Was it a
pleasant dinner-party last night?" I asked--as if the subject really
interested me. I had not been quite four and twenty hours in England yet,
and I was becoming a humbug already.

My stepmother was her charming self again the moment my question had
passed my lips. Society--provided it was not society at the mill--was
always attractive as a topic of conversation. "Your absence was the only
drawback," she answered. "I have asked the two ladies (my lord has an
engagement) to dine here to-day, without ceremony. They are most anxious
to meet you. My dear Gerard! you look surprised. Surely you know who the
ladies are?"

I was obliged to acknowledge my ignorance.

Mrs. Roylake was shocked. "At any rate," she resumed, "you have heard of
their father, Lord Uppercliff?"

I made another shameful confession. Either I had forgotten Lord
Uppercliff, during my long absence abroad, or I had never heard of him.

Mrs. Roylake was disgusted. "And this is a foreign education!" she
exclaimed. "Thank Heaven, you have returned to your own country! We will
drive out after luncheon, and pay a round of visits." When this prospect
was placed before me, I remembered having read in books of sensitive
persons receiving impressions which made their blood run cold; I now
found myself one of those persons, for the first time in my life. "In the