"I am pleased to see you," she said. "You are very fair; I hope you are as good as you are fair." Lady Doris wondered why, for one half minute, every one around her looked so solemn, why her father's debonair face had lost its color, why Lady Estelle turned so hastily away, why Earle stood looking on with a strange light in his eyes. It was droll. Then she dismissed the thought. They were all more or less sentimental, and there was no accounting for sentimental people at all. She was destined the same evening to feel a little more surprised. There had always been the most perfect harmony and sympathy of taste between the earl and his daughter, they resembled each other so closely. Lady Doris felt half inclined to dislike the duchess; her exclusiveness, her hauteur, awed her after a fashion that was rather disagreeable than otherwise. As usual, she went to the earl for sympathy. "Papa," she said, "the worst enemy her grace ever had could not call her lively." "She is no longer young; liveliness is one of the attributes of youth, you know, Doris." "Yes, but a little more of it would certainly not hurt her, papa." The earl went to his daughter and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Doris," he said, "I want to speak to you most particularly, and I want you to pay the greatest attention to what I have to say." She looked up in wonder at this preamble. "Let me impress upon you," he said, "that it is my earnest wish that you should treat the duke and duchess with all the respect, attention, and affection that lies in your power. You cannot show them too much, and the more you show them the better shall I be pleased. They are my wife's parents." "I suppose," thought Doris, "he expects they will leave him a fortune. However, I must trim my bark according to the sea I have to sail on." So she promised to show all deference, all homage, all respect. She did so. The duke admired her beyond everything; he thought her one of the most beautiful, most graceful, one of the cleverest girls he had ever met. But the duchess did not like her; she had never forgotten her first impression, that the girl was both vain and wanting in goodness. She tried to like her, to make the most of her beauty, her talent, but there was no real warmth in her heart toward her daughter's child. Earle, on the contrary, won her honest liking. In her own mind, although she knew that Doris was the daughter of Lord Linleigh, and the descendant of the Herefords, she thought her inferior to Earle Moray. So this strangely assorted household remained until the time drew near when the earl thought of going to London.