"Strawberries?" he suggested, appealingly. "Nothing, thank you!" Smiling a little, he looked at her. "I wish you would give me a word, Miss Vancourt! Won't you?" "A dozen, if you like!"--she replied, indifferently--"How is Aunt Emily?" "I am glad you ask after her!"--he said, impressively--"She is well,--but she misses you very much." He paused, and added in a lower tone--"So do I!" She was silent. "I know you are angry!" he went on softly--"You went away from London to avoid me, and you are vexed to see me down here. But I couldn't resist the temptation of coming. Marius Longford told me he had called upon you with Sir Morton Pippitt at Abbot's Manor,--and I got him to bring me down on a visit to Badsworth Hall,--only to be near you! You are looking quite lovely, Maryllia!" She raised her eyes and fixed them full on him. His own fell. "I said you were angry, and you are!" he murmured--"But you have the law in your own hands,--you need not ask me to your house unless you like!" The buzz of conversation in the room was now loud and incessant. Sir Morton Pippitt's 'afternoon teas' were always more or less bewildering and brain-jarring entertainments, where a great many people of various 'sets,' in the town of Riversford and the county generally, came together, without knowing each other, or wishing to know each other,--where the wife of the leading doctor in Riversford, for example, glowered scorn and contempt on Mrs. Mordaunt Appleby, the wife of the brewer in the same town, and where those of high and unimpeachable 'family,' like Mrs. Mandeville Poreham, whose mother was a Beedle, stared frigidly and unseeingly at every one hailing from the same place as creatures beneath her notice. For--"Thank God!"--said Mrs. Poreham, with feeling,--"I do not live in Riversford. I would not live in Riversford if I were paid a fortune to do so! My poor mother never permitted me to associate with tradespeople. There are no ladies or gentlemen in Riversford,-- I should be expected to shake hands with my butcher if I resided there,--but I am proud and glad to say that at present I know nobody in the place. I never intend to know anybody there!" Several curious glances were turned upon Miss Vancourt as she stood near an open window looking out on the Badsworth Hall 'Italian Garden,'--a relic of Badsworth times,--her fair head turned away from the titled aristocrat who bent towards her, as it seemed, in an attitude of humble appeal,--and one or two would-be wise persons nodded their heads and whispered--"That's the man she's engaged to." "Oh, really!---and his name---?" "Lord Roxmouth;--will be Duke of Ormistoune---" "Good gracious! THAT woman a Duchess!" snorted Mrs. Mordaunt Appleby, as she heard--"The men must be going mad!" Which latter remark implied that had she not unfortunately married a brewer, she might easily have secured the Ormistoune ducal coronet herself.