She smiled at the wide-eyed little gossip. "Don't speak of manaoeuvres,
dear aunt. And we'll leave Granada to the poets. I'm tired. Talk of
our own people, on your side and my father's, and as much as you please
of the Pagnell-Pagnells, they refresh me. Do they go on marrying?"

"Why, my child, how could they go on without it?"

Aminta pressed her hands at her eyelids. "Oh, me!" she sighed, feeling
the tear come with a sting from checked laughter. "But there are
marriages, aunty, that don't go on, though Protestant clergymen
officiated. Leave them unnoticed, I have really nothing to tell."

"You have not heard anything of Lady Eglett?"

"Lady Charlotte Eglett? No syllable. Or wait--my lord's secretary was
with her at Olmer; approved by her, I have to suppose."

"There, my dear, I say again I do dread that woman, if she can make a man
like Lord Ormont afraid of her. And no doubt she is of our old
aristocracy. And they tell me she is coarse in her conversation--like a
man. Lawyers tell me she is never happy but in litigation. Years back,
I am given to understand, she did not set so particularly good an
example. Lawyers hear next to everything. I am told she lifted her
horsewhip on a gentleman once, and then put her horse at him and rode him
down. You will say, the sister of your husband. No; not to make my
niece a countess, would I, if I had known the kind of family! Then one
asks, Is she half as much afraid of him? In that case, no wonder they
have given up meeting. Was formerly one of the Keepsake Beauties. Well,
Lady Eglett, and Aminta, Countess of Ormont, will be in that Peerage, as
they call it, let her only have her dues. My dear, I would--if I ever