receive them. And if both husband and wife were very pale, very silent,
and very nervous, who is to blame them? Sir Victor had set society at
defiance; it was society's turn now, and then--there was Inez!

For Lady Catheron, the dark, menacing figure of her husband's cousin
haunted her, too. As the big, turreted, towered, ivied pile of stone
and mortar called Catheron Royals, with its great bell booming, its
Union Jack waving, reared up before the soap-boiler's daughter--she
absolutely cowered with a dread that had no name.

"I am afraid!" she said. "Oh, Victor, I am afraid!"

He laughed--not quite naturally, though. If the painful truth must be
told of a baronet and a Catheron, Sir Victor was afraid, too.

"Afraid?" he laughed; "of what, Ethel? The ghost of the Gray Lady, who
walks twice in every year in Rupert's Tower? Like all fine old
families, we have our fine old family ghost, and would not part with
it for the world. I'll tell you the legend some day; at present 'screw
your courage to the sticking place,' for here we are."

He descended from the carriage, and walked into the grand manorial
hall, vast enough to have lodged a hundred men, his wife on his arm,
his head very high, his face very pale. She clung to him, poor child!
and yet she battled hard for her dignity, too. Hat in hand, smiling
right and left in the old pleasant way, he shook hands with Mrs. Marsh
and Mr. Hooper, presented them to my lady, and bravely inquired for
Miss Inez. Miss Inez was well, and awaiting him in the Cedar
drawing-room.