"Then I must tell James it cannot be!" Madame Sampiero spoke the words with the odd muffled distinctness which sometimes came over her utterance. But Doctor McKirdy had been thinking carefully over the situation: "Why not ask Mrs. Boringdon?" he growled out. "The woman does little enough for the good living she gets here!" Madame Sampiero looked at her faithful old friend with real gratitude. How foolish she had been not to have thought of that most natural solution! But to her, Oliver Boringdon's mother was the merest shadow, scarcely a name. And so it was that James Berwick's plan was defeated, while Barbara Rebell, who had not as yet become as intimate with Grace Johnstone's mother as she hoped to do, was made, somewhat against her will, to write and invite Mrs. Boringdon and her son to share with her the Priory carriage. CHAPTER X. "Never, my dear, was honour yet undone By love, but by indiscretion!" COWLEY. It was the second day of the three which were being devoted to the coming-of-age festivities of Lord Pendragon, and Miss Berwick had asked herself to lunch at Halnakeham Castle. Because of the great ball which was to take place that evening, this day was regarded by the Duchess and the more sober of her guests as an off-day--one in which there was to be a lull in the many old-fashioned jollifications and junketings which were being given in honour of the son of the house. The Duchess of Appleby and Kendal had been a very good friend to Arabella and to her brother, and that over long years. Owing to a certain inter-marriage between her own family and that of the Berwicks, she chose to consider them as relations, and as such had consistently treated them. She was fond of James, and believed in his political future. Arabella she respected and admired: both respect and admiration having sure foundations in a fact which had come to the Duchess's knowledge in the days when she was still young, still slender, and still, so she sometimes told herself with a sigh, enthusiastic! This fact had been the sacrifice by Arabella Berwick of the small fortune left her by her parents, in order that some debts of her brother's might be paid. At the present moment James Berwick was actually staying at the Castle, and his sister had asked herself to lunch in order, if possible to see, and if not, to hear, on what terms he found himself with that one of his fellow guests whom his hostess, knowing what she did know of Arabella's fears, should not have allowed him to meet under her roof.