"We must make her mannerly, lest her mother should not be satisfied. When she gets big she must learn music and languages; now she must learn to sew and to read. We will let our Mattie learn what she does. She is our only child; we can afford it." "And you mean me to teach them?" asked Patty. "Oh, no, wife. You are too busy. We will send them every day to Brakebury, to the Misses Hopwell." The Misses Hopwell were very genteel ladies; a surgeon's daughters, fallen into narrow circumstances, and keeping a little school, very genteel indeed, where they taught the making of samplers, the tables, reading, writing, the globes, etc., in prim, old-fashioned style. To this "ladies' school" went Mattie and Doris every day, in a little wicker cart, drawn by a donkey, beside which ran a bare-foot farm-boy as their charioteer. And so time went on, and Doris had been four years at the farm, and news now spread abroad that Lady Estelle Hereford was better at last, and the duke was coming home. Back to England finally, and the castle was filled with guests. "I believe," said the duchess to the duke, "that the best thing for our daughter would be a happy marriage. She is over twenty-two. If we could rouse her up to take any interest in any one--all she lacks is animation. She is a Psyche before the coming of Cupid. I heard a gentleman in Italy calling her 'the marble Psyche,' speaking to a friend." "I cannot understand it," said the duke. "During her first year in society she seemed animated and interested. I believe I even once spoke sharply to her for dancing twice with Captain Rodney Alnwick." "You were quite right," said the duchess. "I spoke to her myself about him. He was entirely ineligible in every particular. But that all passed by. I thought she liked him a little, and I was glad when he exchanged his regiment and went off to India. A ne'er-do-well family, if an old one." "We must bring together the best _partis_," said the duke, "and she may fancy some one. I long to see her settled, and to have grandchildren about me." The guests came; and among them, calm, gracious, lovely, went Lady Estelle, untouched by adoration, a goddess moving in a nimbus of her own impregnable repose. There was a dinner-party given for the Bishop of Lansdown, and, as usual, the bishop was full of stories, and told them well. "I remember," said Lady Estelle, "before we went abroad, you told me some story that interested me--something about a child----" "No doubt--about the child left at Mark Brace's door." "Perhaps that might be it. I suppose it has been claimed." "Not at all. Mark has it yet, and shows himself a most honest man in his care of it." "Ah! In what way?" "He not only adores the child, but he rears it delicately, and he means to educate her." "Yes? And can one be educated at Brakebury?" said the soft, caressing, languid, scarcely interested voice.