The excitement about the ball, however, was not all pleasurable. The invitation came a few days after, and at first Lydia, who had a great spirit, altogether refused to avail herself of it. She was in the parlour with her mother, arranging bunches of the ruddy leaves and rowan berries which made the country gay, in the big old-fashioned china vases which stood on the mantel-piece, and which were worth their weight in silver, though nobody was aware of it. Lionel Brotherton had come in on his way back from a short day’s shooting. He had brought some game, which lay in a shallow basket on the table, the mingled colours of the plumage harmonizing well with the warm autumnal tints of leaves and fruit. The whole culminated in the girl’s glowing and animated countenance as she stood by the table, twisting her garlands of leaves and throwing them about with a freshness of gesture and energy which only a touch of indignation could have given. She had put a cluster of the red berries into her hair, with a few long serrated leaves, marked with brilliant red upon the green; and thus crowned was like an autumnal nymph, not mature enough for a Ceres, but yet warm with the northern glow of colour and life. “Why should I go?” she was saying. “What is it to me, mother? If the Duchess chooses to fling an invitation at us after all these years, are you and I to seize upon it as if we cared? I don’t care. I don’t want it. I should not like to go--Of course I may be forced,” cried Lydia. “I may have to do it, for all the several reasons which people always bring up; but listen, mother, this is the truth, I should not like to go.” “My dearest,” said her mother, joining her hands in that instinctive movement of entreaty which was her natural attitude. Nobody could admire Liddy as her mother did, not even the young man who sat a little apart gazing at her, and thinking all kinds of foolish thoughts. Mrs. Joscelyn saw in her the perfection of herself, the accomplished ideal to which she had been striving all her life. She herself would never have had the strength of mind to look so, and speak so--but Liddy had; and even while she remonstrated and entreated, she approved. “My pet, that is just your fancy. Why shouldn’t you like it? You have never been at a ball.” “That is just the reason,” cried Lydia; “when I do go I want to enjoy it. I want to be as good as anybody there. I want people to think as much of me as anyone, and ask me to dance, and think my dress pretty, and like me altogether. I won’t go anywhere unless I can be sure of that.” “And so you will, my darling,” Mrs. Joscelyn said. Brotherton did not venture to speak, but he put a great deal into his eyes. Lydia indeed did not look at him, and so could not perceive this, but perhaps she had some notion of it all the same. Her colour increased the least in the world, taking a glow from the red leaves in her hands and the red berries in her hair.