This estimate of Matilda's state of mind was a shrewd one, except for one neglected item. Now that the moment of impulse was over, the balance might have been even: but Lady Munro's name had turned the scale, and Matilda 'venerated' her new friend. Mona's strong and vivid personality would have made any one forget in her presence that she was 'only a shop-girl'; but no power on earth could prevent the recollection from returning--perhaps with renewed force--when her immediate influence was withdrawn. If a man of culture like Dr Dudley could not wholly ignore the fact of her social inferiority, how much less was it possible to an empty little soul like Matilda Cookson? for she was one of those people to whose moral and spiritual progress an earthly crutch is absolutely essential. She never forgot that conversation at Castle Maclean; but the two things that in after years stood out most clearly in her memory were the quotation about the martyrs, and Mona's relationship to Lady Munro. And surely this is not so strange? Do not even the best of us stand with one foot on the eternal rock, and the other on the shifting sands of time? "How odd that she should be struck by that quotation!" mused Mona. "I wonder what Dr Dudley would say if he knew that the notes of the Pilgrims' Chorus, rising clear, steady, and unvarying above all the noises of the world, appealed even to the stupid little ears of Matilda Cookson. If the mother is no more than he says, there must be some good stuff in the father. _Ex nihilo, nihil fit_." CHAPTER XXVIII. THE COLONEL'S YARN. The next morning brought Mona a budget of letters on the subject of Lucy's visit to the Riviera. Lady Munro had risen to the occasion magnificently. "If your friend is in the least like you," she wrote, "I shall be only too glad to have her as a companion for Evelyn. I have written to ask her to be my guest for a month, and the sooner she comes the better." "I have only known you for a few years," wrote Lucy, "and I seem to have grown tired of saying that I don't know how to thank you. It will be nuts for me to go to Cannes, without feeling that my father is living on hasty-pudding at home; and it will be a great thing to be with people like the Munros; but if they expect that I am going to live up to your level, I shall simply give up the ghost at once. I have written to assure them that I am an utter and unmitigated fraud; but do you tell them the same, in case there should be bloodshed on my arrival. "As for your dear letter and enclosure, I handed them straight over to Father, and asked him what I was to do. He read the letter twice through carefully, and then gave me back--the bank-note only! 'Keep it,' he said briefly; and I fancied--I say I _fancied_--that there was a suspicious dimness about his eyes. You have indeed made straight tracks for the Pater's heart, Mistress Mona, if he allows his daughter to accept twenty pounds from you.