She was seated in her little drawing-room full of these doubts and questions one morning very soon after the FitzStephens’ ball. It seemed impossible now that things could go on as they were. The mere fact of all that had been said on the subject shook the foundations of life. And Mab’s age made a change in everything. So long as she was a child, the obscurity of her position was of no consequence. All that was needed for her was her mother’s care, and to be with her mother wherever she might happen to be; but with every day the position changed. Lord William Pakenham’s child was one thing, and Emily Plowden’s another. Was it her duty to let Mab grow up in the humbler region, perhaps fix her own fate in that, and settle for ever as a poor man’s wife in the village, while another world might be open to her? Had she any right to bind her child to her own limited fortunes, to keep her all her life a mere pensioner on the bounty of those who ought to recognise and care for her in a very different way? But if she made any attempt to alter the position, might she not make it worse instead of better? Might she not subject herself only, and Mab, who was of more consequence, to a repulse which would be much worse than neglect, to perhaps a question even of the humble rights which had been already recognised, the right of the widow and child to a subsistence, however doled out? The thought of having to fight for those rights, to open up the secrets of her life, and prove that she had a right to her name, was an idea intolerable to Lady William. She said to herself with a sick heart that she would rather die--she would rather die! Oh, that would be an easy way out of it; but that she should die and leave Mab behind her to fight it out, to prove her own lawful birth, her mother’s honour, that was impossible. If she were to die she must climb out of her grave, she felt, to prevent that, to take the brunt upon herself, to save from such a horrible struggle the child, the little girl who did not know what dishonour was--Mab, of all creatures in the world, to have any stain upon her of any kind! Then Lady William tried to brace herself up to think that she must no longer hesitate, that for Mab’s happiness she must venture everything, and prove at last, beyond any question, that whatever her fate might be there could never be in it any doubt or possibility of shame. She was seated thinking of all this, her needlework going mechanically through her hands, her head bent, and every faculty occupied with this debate within herself, when she heard the little click of the gate which announced a visitor, and then the rap of Patty’s knuckles upon the door. ‘If you please, my lydy, it is Mr. Swinford and a strange gentleman. Am I to say as your lydyship’s at home?’ ‘Did I ever tell you to say I was not at home, Patty?’ ‘I don’t know, my lydy. You wouldn’t speak to me not for two days, ‘cause I let Mr. Leo come in.’