He knew perfectly well that the two ladies met continually, although there was little cordiality between them. But Lady Mary's last speech showed him she intended to keep Mrs. Wriothesley at arms' length, if possible, for the future; and Pansey Cottrell smiled as he thought that his hostess's schemes would, in all likelihood, be as persistently thwarted in town as they had been in the country. "Well, I trust that Blanche and I will contrive to see a good bit of each other all the same," replied Sylla courteously. "You know my aunt, Captain Bloxam," she continued, as she moved away. "I should have thought her an easy person to get on with; but I am afraid Lady Mary does not like her." CHAPTER VIII. MRS. WRIOTHESLEY. When Ralph Wriothesley of the Household Cavalry, better known among his intimates as the "Rip," married pretty Miss Lewson, niece of that worldly and bitter-tongued old Lady Fanshawe, everybody said what a fool he had made of himself. What did he, a man who had already developed a capacity for expenditure much in excess of his income, want with a wife who brought little or no grist to the mill? The world was wrong--as the world very frequently is on such points. It was about the first sensible thing that the "Rip," in the course of his good-humoured, blundering, plunging career, had done. It saved him. Without the check that his clever little wife almost imperceptibly imposed upon him, "Rip" Wriothesley would probably, ere this, have joined the "broken brigade," and vanished from society's ken. As it was, the pretty little house in Hans Place throve merrily; and though people constantly wondered how the Wriothesleys got on, yet the unmistakable fact remained, that season after season they were to be seen everywhere and ruffling it with the best.