“May I go now, and read my history?” said Innocent, after a pause. She went back to the path overshadowed with trees, and opened her book; and whispered to herself again, half aloud, how Mary plotted and wove her spells, how Elizabeth lay in wait for her like a spider. She resumed at the same sentence as if nothing had happened. How much of it went into her mind? How much of the other had gone into her mind? Sir Alexis, Frederick, all the surrounding figures, were they ghostly and dim to her as Mary of Scotland and the great Elizabeth? But no one could answer this question. Amid the strange light-gleams and weird darkness of her own little world she dwelt alone. CHAPTER XXVII. MRS. FREDERICK. The evening of the day on which the above incidents occurred was that of a periodical banquet, feared and staved off as long as possible by all the Eastwoods. Since the time of Frederick’s marriage it had been considered necessary that he and his wife should be invited to dinner formally from time to time, in order that it might be visible to the world and “Mrs. Frederick’s family” that full honour was done to her. Nelly and Mrs. Eastwood had made a great effort to adopt Amanda, if not into their hearts, at least into their society, after the terrible event was actually accomplished which made her their daughter and sister. But I need not say that this was a very hopeless attempt, and that as familiar companionship gradually failed between people who resembled each other so little, the periodical dinner gradually gained importance as the only practicable way of keeping up “a proper intercourse.” Mrs. Frederick had come to London with very great ideas. She had hoped for nothing less than an entry into the fashionable world, and all the glory of associating with lords and ladies. The visits she received from the ladies of Mrs. Eastwood’s circle disgusted and disappointed her. What! Marry and come to London for no better purpose than to be visited by ladies from the suburbs, who lived there always--ladies with no better title than Mrs.; some of them, like Mrs. Eastwood herself, paying their visits in flys, or in the plainest of little broughams, no better than a fly. Visions of splendid vehicles, with embroidered hammercloths and celestial flunkeys, had entranced Amanda’s imagination. The Eastwoods were county people at Sterborne--they were a baronet’s family--magnates in the neighbourhood; and the beauty had no means of realizing that a country baronet is no great personage in London, much less a country baronet’s cousin. The disappointment was bitter, and she was not the woman to conceal it. Gradually, however, she fell into a kind of society, or to use her own words, formed a circle, which pleased her well enough. This consisted chiefly of the men who had been her father’s visitors in former days, several of whom had handles to their names. They were not as a general rule much credit to know, but they suited Amanda better than the Mrs.