"Do not speak of them," she said hurriedly, "forget that I have ever known them. Would to God my own memory were a blank! Ah, there is your young friend Mrs. Durnford smiling welcome at me, and her clever husband, too;" and Lady Judith ran into the house, and was presently embracing Irene, whom she had not seen since last winter. Lady Polwhele and the two other ladies had stayed by the coach all this time, squabbling with the two maids, who had travelled in the rumble, and who were broadly accused of having left nearly everything behind, because this or that precious consignment could not be produced on the moment. "I feel certain my jewel-case is lost!" exclaimed the Dowager, "and if it is I am a ruined woman; for it contains some of the very finest of the family diamonds, which are heirlooms, and must be given up to my son's wife whenever he marries. I wouldn't so much have minded my own rubies and emeralds, though the ruby necklace is worth a small fortune; and to think that careless hussy should have forgotten where she put it!" "Indeed, your ladyship carried it to the coach--nay, 'twas Captain Asterley carried it, and your ladyship ordered where it was to be put." "Ifackens, so I did, wench!" cried the Dowager, who was very vulgar when she was in a good temper. "'Tis on the floor of the coach, Lyddy, and I had my feet on it all the way down. Lord, what a no-memory I have, child!" tapping Mrs. Lydia Vansittart archly with her fan, and ignoring the falsely-accused abigail, who stood by with an aggrieved countenance. "I rejoice to hear your ladyship's memory is bad," said Lavendale, approaching the group with his courtly air, at once debonair and stately, "for in that case I dare hope you will forget the poverty of your entertainment at Lavendale Manor, and remember only how enchanted its master was to have you under his roof." "Poverty, my dear Lavendale! Your house has a delightful air, and I am going to be ravished with everything I see in it. There is nothing so agreeable, to my ideas, as a fine old mansion which time has sobered down to a prevailing sombreness--the mellow colouring of centuries. I hate your newly-built and newly-appointed house, with its Italian pediment and marble floors, and its draughty comfortless rooms. Give me a house that my ancestors have aired for me. A man who inhabits a house of his own building must feel like Adam, as if he had never had a father." They were all in the hall by this time, and Lady Polwhele was warming her feet, which were one of her good points, at the log fire, turning about the little velvet slippers with a coquettish air, now making a Bristol diamond buckle flash in the firelight, and now bringing into play an instep exaggerated by a three-inch heel.