A cup of hot tea having been thankfully consumed, Miss Strong, after a short interval, conducted her new acquaintance into the dining-room, which in warmth and snugness vied with the room she had left, and, seating Miss Manwaring at table, ordered dinner to be brought in at once. A tidy maid-servant obeyed her mistress’s order with almost miraculous alacrity, and an excellent little dinner was speedily placed on the table. Hot clear ox-tail soup, a juicy fowl stuffed and roasted to a turn, with hot potatoes, bread sauce, and a scientifically constructed winter salad, followed by Albany puddings, served up with their proper sauce, made up the simple but capital meal, which brought a tinge of colour back to the cheeks of the traveller in whose especial behoof it had been prepared; and when the cloth was removed, and Miss Strong had insisted on her guest’s partaking of a brimming glass of old port which had belonged to her late brother, Colonel Strong, R.A., Miss Manwaring felt more at home and more refreshed and rested than an hour ago she could have imagined to be possible. Miss Strong was unwilling to detain her guest long after they had returned to the drawing-room, and urged her early retirement to rest, advice which Miss Manwaring was by no means loath to follow. “Now good night, my dear,” said her kind friend, as she prepared to leave Miss Manwaring’s apartments, to which she had accompanied her; “and please expect me to-morrow at half after four, when I shall call and take you to see the Duchess.” “Oh dear!” cried Evelyn, weariedly, “what Duchess?” “Why, the Duchess of Ribblesdale, to be sure, our Duchess, the best and dearest lady in the world; the _Vice-Reine_ of Hampton Court, I call her. She would have come to call upon you herself, but she has a cold, and cannot go out; so she desired me to bring you to see her, and to say she used to know your mother when they were both girls.” “Ah!” said Miss Manwaring, in a strange, dreamy tone of voice. “Ah! how strange! Yes, that name ought to be dear to me. I shall be glad to see her Grace to-morrow.” Miss Strong now committed her young companion to the care of Bessie Hudson, her Lancashire maid, and retired to her own apartments; and Miss Manwaring was soon in bed, and sleeping the peaceful sleep of youth and innocence.