Lady Acorn rose from table early. She had been making up her mind to the match, during dinner: like her husband, she discovered, on reflection, its numerous advantages, and she was impatient to disclose the matter to Grace. Mr. Grubb held the door open as they filed out, for which the countess thanked him by a bow more cordial than she had ever bestowed on him in her life. Whether it had ever occurred to Lady Acorn that this City man was probably the son of Catherine Grant, cannot be told. She had never alluded to it. Catherine had offended them all too greatly to be recalled even by name: and, so far as Lord Acorn went, he did not know such a person as Catherine had ever existed. The girls gathered their chairs round the fire in the autumn evening, and began grumbling. "Engagements"--he did not say of what nature--had been Lord Acorn's plea for remaining in town when every one else had left it. Adela was especially bitter. "Papa never does things like other people. When we ought to be away, we are boxed up in town; and when every one else is in town, we are kept in the country. I'm sick of it." "It's a pity, girls, you haven't husbands to cater for you, as you are sick of your father's rule," tartly spoke their mother. "You don't go off; any of you." "It is Grace's turn to go first," cried Lady Harriet. "Yes, it is--and one wedding in a family often leads to another," observed the wily countess. "I should like to see Grace well settled. With a fine place of her own, where we could go and visit her, and a nice town mansion; and a splendid income to support it all." "And a box at the opera," suggested Frances. "And a herd of deer, and a pack of hounds, and the crown diamonds," interrupted Adela, with irony in her tone, and a spice of scorn in her eye, as she glanced up from her book. "Don't you wish we had Aladdin's lamp? It might come to pass then." "But if I tell you that it will come to pass without it," said Lady Acorn, "that it _has_ come to pass, what should you say? Look up, Grace, my dear; there's luck in store for you yet." Their mother's manner was so pointedly significant, that all were silent from amazement. The colour mounted to the cheeks of Grace, and her lips parted: could it be that she was no longer to remain Lady Grace _Chenevix?_ "Grace, child," continued the countess, "the time has gone by for you to pick and choose. You are now getting on for thirty, and have never had the ghost of a chance----" "That is more than you ought to say, mamma," interrupted Grace, her face flushing, perhaps at her mother's assertion telling home. "I may have had--I _did_ have a chance, as you call it, but----" "Well, not that we ever knew of; let us amend the sentence in that way. What I was going to observe is, that you must not be over-particular now." "_Has_ Grace got an offer?" inquired Harriet, breathlessly.