“No, mother, I know how it will be. We shall come in at the end with the Selbys, and the Armstrongs and the Pilgrims, and--oh, a great many more. There will not be any want of companions in distress. We will all keep together at one end of the room, and our hearts will all beat if anybody comes near us. If it is an officer from Carlisle, or if it is Mr. Brotherton, or still more if it should happen to be Lord Eldred. Oh my!” cried Lydia with momentary mimicry, clasping her hands, “We shall look at him as if we could eat him, and almost hold out our hands like the children at school, and cry, me, me! If you think that is nice for nice girls to have to do, mother, I don’t,” said Lydia with a sudden vivid flush. “So I don’t want to go.” “But that is impossible,” Brotherton cried. “No, not at all impossible; it is just what happens, when people ask you because they cannot help it; of course they don’t take any trouble about you; and of course the gentlemen prefer to dance with girls they know, and who belong to their own class, instead of seeking out poor little Miss Selbys and Miss Armstrongs, and Miss Jos--No,” said Liddy vehemently, “a Miss Joscelyn has never been in it, and, mother, if you please, never will be. I don’t say,” she added, calming down, “that it is anyone’s fault. I feel quite sure for one that you would ask me to dance, Mr. Brotherton.” “Do you really--think so? The time has come,” said the young man, hurried and nervous, but with a laugh of excitement, “to set one matter to rights. Mr. Brotherton will certainly not ask you to dance, Miss Joscelyn. I have a right to be Cousin Lionel, and I will be so. I am not to be defrauded of my birthright any longer. You talk of the Duchess, but you are far more haughty than the Duchess. Take the beam out of your own eye, Cousin Lydia, and then you will see more clearly to take the mote out of the Duchess’s. Mrs. Joscelyn, am I not right?” Mrs. Joscelyn looked at them both with a pleasure that almost went the length of tears. In the sudden union which her glance from one to another made between them, the young man and the young woman blushed--blushed for nothing at all, for sympathy, for fellow-feeling, and a little for pleasure. “Yes, yes, my dear,” Mrs. Joscelyn said, “yes, yes, I think he is right; and your cousin--your cousin would make a difference. And then, my darling, if you do not go, people will never know that you were invited, Liddy; and that means--” “That we are not county people; and we are not county people. We need not keep up any pretences before--before Cousin Lionel,” said Lydia with a blush and a smile, and a curtsey to the young man, who looked on with a sense of enchantment. “Uncle Henry was one of them; but not we. We are Joscelyns, however,” she cried, tossing her head upwards with a proud movement, “and if blood means anything, that means something better than her Grace.”