"Ah!" said Lady Ingram, shrugging her shoulders slightly. "Very well. You shall decide, _chère_ Celia. At the least you will visit me?" "I will visit you, Madam, with pleasure," answered Celia, a little to the damage of truth; "but these dear friends, who have had a care of me from my childhood, I could not leave them entirely, Madam." The sentence ended in tears. "I am not an officer of justice, _ma belle_!" said Lady Ingram, laughing faintly. "Ah, well! a visit let it be. You will come with me--for a visit--on Thursday?" "I will attend your Ladyship." "You live near, Madam?" asked Madam Passmore, wondering whether she could live so far away as the next county. "I live in France," was the unconcerned answer,--"in Paris in the winter, and not far thence in the summer." The Squire almost gasped for breath. "And where is your summer dwelling, Madam? I think, if you please, that I have a right to ask." "Oh! certainly. At St. Germain-en-Laye." "St. fiddlesticks-and-fiddlestrings!" roared the Squire. "Sir!" observed Lady Ingram, apparently a little startled at last. "Pope, Pretender, and Devil!" thundered the exasperated Whig. "Ah! I only know one of the three," said Lady Ingram, subsiding. "And pray which is that, Madam?" grimly inquired he. "_Le Roi Jacques_--you call the Pretender," said she calmly, drawing on her glove. "If you please, Madam," asked Celia, with an effort, "do you know what was my mother's name?" "White, Black--some color--I know not whether Red, Green, or Blue. She was a nobody--a mere nobody," replied her successor, dismissing Celia's insignificant mother with a graceful wave of her hands. "Have I any brothers or sisters, Madam?" "Sisters! no. Two brothers--one son of your mother, and one of mine." "They live with you, Madam?" "My son Philip does," said the Baronet's widow. "Your brother--Sir Edward now--is away on his travels, the saints know where. But he talked to me much about you before he went, and Philip teased me about you--so I came." "Celia!" said the Squire, sternly, "this woman is an alien, a Tory, and a Papist. Will you still go?" "Ought I not, Father?" she asked, in a low tone. "Judge for yourself, child," he answered, kindly. "I think I ought to go," said Celia, faintly. "I am a Catholic, Mr. Passmore, it is true," remarked Lady Ingram, quietly; "yet you need not fear me. Sir Edward, my husband, was Protestant, and so is his son Edward: and I do not interfere. We are all surely going to heaven, and what matter for the different roads?" "I think I ought to go," repeated Celia, but Madam Passmore thought, still more faintly than before. "On Thursday, then," answered Lady Ingram, touching Celia's cheek with her lips. "Ah! _ma chère_, how I will improve you when I have you to myself!--how I will form you! That _bon ton_, that _aisance_, that _maintien!_--you have them not. You shall soon! Adieu!"