When that accidental calling of the name was first heard and the following avowal made, the Marchioness declared her immediate feelings by a look. It was so that Arthur may have looked when he first heard that his Queen was sinful,--so that Cæsar must have felt when even Brutus struck him. For though Lady Frances had been known to be blind to her own greatness, still this,--this at any rate was not suspected. "You cannot mean it!" the Marchioness had at last said. "I certainly mean it, mamma." Then the Marchioness, with one hand guarding her raiment, and with the other raised high above her shoulder, in an agony of supplication to those deities who arrange the fates of ducal houses, passed slowly out of the room. It was necessary that she should bethink herself before another word was spoken. For some time after that very few words passed between her and the sinner. A dead silence best befitted the occasion;--as, when a child soils her best frock, we put her in the corner with a scolding; but when she tells a fib we quell her little soul within her by a terrible quiescence. To be eloquently indignant without a word is within the compass of the thoughtfully stolid. It was thus that Lady Frances was at first treated by her stepmother. She was, however, at once taken up to London, subjected to the louder anger of her father, and made to prepare for the Saxon Alps. At first, indeed, her immediate destiny was not communicated to her. She was to be taken abroad;--and, in so taking her, it was felt to be well to treat her as the policeman does his prisoner, whom he thinks to be the last person who need be informed as to the whereabouts of the prison. It did leak out quickly, because the Marquis had a castle or château of his own in Saxony;--but that was only an accident. The Marchioness still said little on the matter,--unless in what she might say to her husband in the secret recesses of marital discussion; but before she departed she found it expedient to express herself on one occasion to Lord Hampstead. "Hampstead," she said, "this is a terrible blow that has fallen upon us." "I was surprised myself. I do not know that I should call it exactly a blow." "Not a blow! But of course you mean that it will come to nothing." "What I meant was, that though I regard the proposition as inexpedient--" "Inexpedient!" "Yes;--I think it inexpedient certainly; but there is nothing in it that shocks me." "Nothing that shocks you!" "Marriage in itself is a good thing." "Hampstead, do not talk to me in that way." "But I think it is. If it be good for a young man to marry it must be good for a young woman also. The one makes the other necessary." "But not for such as your sister,--and him--together. You are speaking in that way simply to torment me." "I can only speak as I think. I do agree that it would be inexpedient. She would to a certain extent lose the countenance of her friends--" "Altogether!"