“I ain’t mistaken—I can credit my own eyes,”—Lady Sundon kept her point,—“and to march in regimentals, with a regiment of common men as honest as their betters, was none so shocking, after the stories I have heard told of card-playing on Sunday evenings, Sir Peter, of masquerading, of appointments in Belsize Park, of Fleet marriages—Parliament hath forbidden the last—you have lost that chance, girls.” “Madam, would you ever liken us to it?” gasped the step-daughters. “Polly, your tongue wags too freely,” remonstrated her husband, “and I won’t have you run Lady Bell and the girls off their feet. Besides, what is to become of me?” he asked in a dolorous tone; “am I to be left to Jebb’s gallipots and James’s powders, while you are frisking about all day and all night? Is that what you call acting the part of a good wife, and training up these daughters of ours in the way they should go?” “Oh, no fears—no fears of you, above all, my dear,” Sir Peter’s lively helpmate reassured him. “You’ll be seen to, whatever comes of it. Were you ever forgotten? Indeed, to suppose so, is the unkindest cut you’ve given me and the girls this age.” And then, failing to be cut by the cut, Lady Sundon proceeded to plan a party of pleasure. CHAPTER VI. A GAY YOUNG MADAM. With so light-hearted a head of the house, just held in check by the mild selfishness of Sir Peter and the mild grumbling of his daughters, Lady Bell could not have a dull time of it during her stay in town. No doubt there were the drawbacks which are inevitable in life, and which make the realisation of our dearest wishes fall short of the expectation. There was the tender pang with which Lady Bell, having hurried to the spot on the first opportunity, looked on the outside of her old home, Lady Lucie’s lodgings in Bruton Street, occupied by strangers. There was the pensive wonder and regret with which, forgetting the changes in herself, Lady Bell found that even a few years had been able to make havoc in Lady Lucie’s circle; so many of the members were old, like Lady Lucie, and had soon followed her in death; while the younger individuals, engrossed with their personal cares, had all but forgotten little Lady Bell, who had so faithfully remembered them, and met her again with the indifference of exhausted acquaintance. Strange moving vicissitudes had overtaken some of the old familiar figures. But though they startled and affected Lady Bell for the moment, the victims had not been so much to her, that their memory should continue to weigh upon her mind, and the blanks which their absence made, at first, were soon amply supplied. In like manner, if the very topics of conversation were changed, and nobody seemed to remember the old Princess of Wales’s death, or the failure of Fordyce’s Bank, Lady Bell could catch the new cue and speak of the American war with the best.