"I am very glad I gave the order to Mason," thought that good lady. "I only wish we did not meet the man in society; but it is impossible to help that. We are all cards of one pack, and get shuffled together, whether we like it or not. I wish Philip would pay her more attention; he admires her, I can see, and he can make any woman like him in ten days when he takes the trouble; but he is so tiresome! She would be exactly suited to him; she has all he would exact--beauty, talent, good blood, and even fortune, though that he would not need. The alliance would be a great happiness to me. Well, he dines here to-night, and he gives that concert at his barracks to-morrow morning, purely to please Cecil, I am sure. I think it may be brought about with careful management." With which pleasant reflection she went to drive in the Ring, thinking that her maternal and duenna duties would be alike well fulfilled, and her chaperone's career well finished, if by any amount of tact, intrigue, finesses, and diplomacy she could live to see Cecil Ormsby sign herself Cecil Carruthers. "If that man were only out of town!" she thought, as Cheveley passed them in Amandine's mail-phaeton at the turn. Lady Marabout might wish Cheveley were out of town--and wish it devoutly she did--but she wasn't very likely to have her desire gratified till the general migration should carry him off in its tide to the deck of a yacht, a lodge in the Highlands, a German Kursaal, or any one of those myriad "good houses" where nobody was so welcome as he, the best shot, the best seat, the best wit, the best billiard-player, the best whist-player, and the best authority on all fashionable topics, of any man in England. Cheveley used to aver that he liked Lady Marabout, though she detested him; nay, that he liked her _for_ her detestation; he said it was cordial, sincere, and refreshing, therefore a treat in the world of Belgravia; still, he didn't like her so well as to leave Town in the middle of May to oblige her; and though he took her hint as it was meant, and pulled up his hansom no more at her door, he met her and Rosediamond's daughter at dinners, balls, concerts, morning-parties innumerable. He saw them in the Ring; he was seen by them at the Opera; he came across them constantly in the gyration of London life. Night after night Lady Cecil persisted in writing his name in her tablets; evening after evening a bizarre fate worried Lady Marabout, by putting him on the left hand of her priceless charge at a dinner-party. Day after day all the harmony of a concert was marred to her ear by seeing her Ogre talking of Beethoven and Mozart, chamber music and bravura music in Cecil's: morning after morning gall was poured into her luncheon sherry, and wormwood mingled in her vol-au-vent, by being told, with frank mischief, by her desired daughter-in-law, that she "had seen Mr. Cheveley leaning on the rails, smoking," when she had taken her after-breakfast canter.