"Yes; that is her name, I believe. I have never been intimate with the young person myself. Uncle James has always been very particular as to whom we associated with. However, since you have taken her up, my dear, I suppose she may be considered visitable." "We have met her at Dr. Bodkin's, you know, Rose," put in Violet, who was looking and listening with a distressed expression of face. "Oh yes; I believe Minnie asked her there at first to please Algernon. Minnie can be good-natured in that sort of way. But I don't know that it was very judicious." "Why should you suppose it was to please my husband that Rhoda was invited to the Bodkins?" asked Castalia. "I don't see that at all. The girl might have been asked to please Miss Bodkin. I daresay she had heard of her from Mrs. Errington. Mrs. Errington is always raving about her." Rose smiled with tightly-closed lips, and nodded. "To be sure! Poor dear Mrs. Errington--I mean no disrespect to your mother-in-law, Castalia, who is really a superior woman, only in some things she is as blind as a bat." Castalia's sallow face was paler than ever. Her nostrils were dilated as if she had been running fast. "You never told me a word of this before," she said. "My dear creature," said Rose, looking full at Castalia for the first time, "why, what was there to tell? The subject was led to by chance now, and I had not the least idea that you did not know all Algy's old love-stories. Everybody here--except, I suppose, poor dear Mrs. Errington--knew of the boy-and-girl nonsense between him and that little thing. But of course it never was serious. That was out of the question." "I don't believe it!" said Castalia, suddenly. "Well, I daresay the thing was exaggerated, as so often happens. For my part, I never could see what there was in the girl to make so many people admire her. A certain freshness, perhaps; and some men do think a great deal of that pink-and-white sort of insipidity." "At all events, Ancram does not care about her now," said Castalia, speaking in broken sentences, and twisting her watch-chain nervously backwards and forwards in her fingers. "Oh, of course not! I daresay he never did care about her in earnest. But that sort of philandering is a little dangerous, isn't it?" "He does not like me to ask her to the house even." "Doesn't he?" "No; he has said so more or less plainly several times. He said so this very evening." "Did he, indeed? Well, I really am glad to hear it. I scarcely gave Algy--Mr. Errington--credit for so much--prudence!" "Mrs. Errington and Miss Maxfield," announced Lydia at the door of the drawing-room. CHAPTER IV.