Frances sat and pondered with her face turned towards the writing-table, at which her mother spent so much of her time. The number of letters that were written there every morning filled her with amazement. Waring had written no letters, and received only one now and then, which Frances understood to be about business. She had looked very respectfully at first on the sheaves which were every day taken away, duly stamped, from that well-worn but much decorated writing-table. When it had been suggested to her that she too must have letters to write, she had dutifully compiled her little bulletin for her father, putting aside as quite a different matter the full chronicle of her proceedings, written at a great many _reprises_, to Mariuccia, which somehow did not seem at all to come under the same description. It had, however, begun to become apparent to Frances, unwillingly, as she made acquaintance with everything about her, that Lady Markham’s correspondence was really by no means of the importance which appeared at the first glance. It seemed to consist generally in the conveyance of little bits of news, of little engagements, of the echoes of what people said and did; and it was replied to by endless shoals of little notes on every variety of tinted, gilt, and perfumed paper, with every kind of monogram, crest, and device, and every new idea in shape and form which the genius of the fashionable stationer could work out. “I have just heard from Lady So-and-so the funniest story,” Lady Markham would say to her son, repeating the anecdote--which on many occasions Frances, listening, did not see the point of. But then both mother and son were cleverer people than she was. “I must write and let Mary St Serle and Louisa Avenel know--it will amuse them so;” and there was at once an addition of two letters to the budget. Frances did not think--all under her breath, as it were, in involuntary unexpressed comment--that the tale was worth a pretty sheet of paper, a pretty envelope--both decorated with Lady Markham’s cipher and coronet--and a penny stamp. But so it was; and this was one of the principal occupations evidently of a great lady’s life. Lady Markham considered it very grave, and “a duty.” She allowed nothing to interfere with her correspondence. “I have my letters to write,” she said, as who should say, “I have my day’s work to do.” By degrees Frances lost her respect for this day’s work, and would watch the manufactory of one note after another with eyes that were unwillingly cynical, wondering within herself whether it would make any difference to the world if pen and ink were forbidden in that house. Markham, too, spoke of writing his letters as a valid reason for much consumption of time. But then, no doubt, Markham had land agents to write to, and lawyers, and other necessary people. In this, Frances did not do justice to her mother, who also had business letters to write, and did a great