"Oliver Vyell, as no doubt you know, has already been mixed up in one entanglement, and has a child for reminder." "Oh, but Dicky is the dearest child! The sweetest-natured, the cleanest-minded! Have you not seen him yet?" Lady Caroline stared. As little as royalty did she understand being cross-questioned. It gave her a quite unexpected sense of helplessness. "I fear you do not at all grasp the position," she said severely. "After all, I had done better to disregard your feelings, whatever they may be, and come to terms at once." "No," answered Ruth, musing; "I do not understand the position; but I want to, more than I can say--and your ladyship must help me, please." She paused a moment. "In New England we prize good birth, good breeding, and what we too call 'family'; but I think the word must mean something different to you who live at home in England." "I should hope so!" breathed Lady Caroline. "It must be mixed up somehow with the great estates you have held for generations and the old houses you have lived in. No," she went on, as Lady Caroline would have interrupted; "please let me work it out in my own way, and then you shall correct me where I am wrong. . . . I have often thought how beautiful it must be to live in such an old house, one that has all its corners full of memories--the nurseries most of all-- of children and grandchildren, that have grown up in gentleness and courtesy and honour--" "Good Lord!" Lady Caroline interjected. "You mean"--Ruth smiled-- "that I am talking like a book? That is partly my fault and partly our New England way; because, you see, we have to get at these things from books. Does it, after all, matter how--if only we get it right? . . . There's a tradition--what, I believe, you call an 'atmosphere'--and you are proud of it and very jealous." "If you see all this," said Lady Caroline, mollified, "our business should be easier, with a little common sense on your part." "And it knits you," pursued Ruth, "into a sort of family conspiracy-- the womenkind especially--like bees in a hive. The head of the family is the queen bee, and you respect him amazingly; but all the same you keep your own judgment, and know when to thwart and when to disobey him, for his own and the family's good. I think you disobeyed Sir Oliver in coming here; or, at least, deceived him and came here without his knowledge." "I am not accustomed," said Lady Caroline, rising, "to direct my conduct upon my nephew's advice." "That, more or less, is what I was trying to say. Dear madam, let me warn you to do so, if you would manage his private affairs." They faced each other now, upon declared war. Lady Caroline's neck was suffused to a purplish red behind the ears. She gasped for speech. Before she found it there came a tapping on the door, and Diana Vyell entered. Chapter XIII. DIANA VYELL.