"Give you good even, Madam!" she said, in a high shrill voice--not one of those which are proverbially "an excellent thing in woman." "These be your waiting gentlewomen?" "These are my daughters," said Lady Enville--stiffly, for her; the mistake had decidedly annoyed her. "Ah!" And the bride kissed them. Then turning to Rachel,--"This, I account, is the lady mistress?" ("That camlet!" said Lady Enville to herself, deeply vexed.) Sir Thomas introduced her gravely,--"My sister." Lady Gertrude's bold dark eyes scanned Rachel with an air of contempt. Rachel, on her part, quite reciprocated the feeling. "You see, Niece, we keep our velvets for Sundays hereaway," she said in her dry way. The bride answered by an affected little laugh, a kiss, and a declaration that travelling ruined everything, and that she was not fit to be seen. At a glance from Lady Enville, Clare offered to show Gertrude to her chamber, and they went up-stairs together. Jack strolled out towards the stable. "Not fit to be seen!" gasped poor Lady Enville. "Sir Thomas, what can we do? In the stead of eighty pound, I should have laid out eight hundred, to match her!" "Bear it, I reckon, my dear," said he quietly. "Make thy mind easy, Orige," scornfully answered Rachel. "I will lay my new hood that her father made his fortune in some manner of craft, and hath not been an Earl above these two years. Very ladies should not deal as she doth." Meanwhile, above their heads, the bride was putting Clare through her catechism. "One of you maidens is not in very deed Sir John's sister. Which is it?" "_Sir_ John?" repeated Clare in surprise. "Of course. Think you I would have wedded a plain Master? I caused my father to knight him first.--Which is it?" "That am I," said Clare. "Oh, you? Well, you be not o'er like him. But you look all like unto common country folk that had never been in good company." Though Clare might be a common country girl, yet she was shocked by Gertrude's rudeness. She had been brought up by Rachel to believe that the quality of her dress was of less consequence than that of her manners. Clare thought that if Gertrude were a fair sample of "good company," she did not wish to mix in it. "I have been alway bred up in the Court," Gertrude went on, removing her hood. "I never was away thence afore. Of course I do conceive that I am descended to a lower point than heretofore--you have no coach, I dare wager? yet I looked not to find my new kin donned in sorry camlet and mean dowlas. Have you any waiting-maid?--or is that piece of civility [civilisation] not yet crept up into this far corner of the world?" Clare summoned Jennet, and took her own seat in the further window. The vulgar, purse-proud tone of Gertrude's remarks disgusted her exceedingly. She did not enter into all of them. Simple Clare could not see what keeping a carriage had to do with gentlemanliness.