"The child is very young yet. She goes in a little donkey-carriage to a really nice little school, kept by two ladies in reduced circumstances. When she gets too old for that school, Mark means to find a better one for her." "Quite thoughtful of him; and the child is pretty?" "More pretty than I can tell you. I am sure she is nobly born. I saw her after service the day I held confirmation." "And her parents have never been found?" asked the duchess. "No; and surely never will be. Great care has been taken to secure secrecy, and Mark feels bound to maintain it." "I do not know but it may be quite as well," said her grace; and then dinner was announced. CHAPTER V. "I WANT TO BE JUST LIKE YOU." "My dear Estelle," said the Duchess of Downsbury, "I had hoped that with returning health you would have more earnestness and animation--be more like your early self." "Possibly my early self was a great simpleton, mamma, and as for animation, most girls are overdoing that. Calmness, what you call indifference, may be my style. Don't you think people like it, mamma?" "Your style is simply perfection," said her grace, "and there are two or three eligible men here just now who plainly think so; if you could only give them a little encouragement." "I'm quite sick of eligible men, mamma. Is it ten or a dozen that I have 'declined with thanks?' I do not give them encouragement because they offer themselves soon enough without it. They don't interest me." "And what will interest you?" asked the perplexed duchess. Lady Estelle waved to and fro, in a meditative manner, her feather fan, as if considering what she _could_ desire. "I believe, now I think of it, it would interest me to go and see that child the Bishop of Lansdown told us of." "My dear, that is not a nice story at all. It is suspicious." "But the Braces are very proper people, and the child may be a very nice child. Brakebury village belongs to us, and I think I never was there. In fact, I have never been over half our estate, nor do I know any of our people." "It is hardly necessary that you should, Estelle." "Because I am not a son and heir, mamma, that is not my fault. I think I should rather have been a boy than a girl. As a boy I might have found something to interest me." She was relapsing into indifference. "We will go and see the child by all means," said the duchess, hastily. "To-morrow at eleven the carriage shall be ready, and your father will accompany us; he wishes to look over the estate a little." At noon next day the ducal party were whirling over the broad, level Downsbury roads toward the home of honest Mark Brace, who, all unconscious of coming honor drove his team afield, while Patty guided her household affairs in their usual shining order.