“Yes;” now leaning back and clasping two long white hands behind her head. “Pretty, amusing, accomplished, good-tempered--I don’t see _how_ I can possibly say no this time, though hitherto I have steadily set my face against having out one of my nieces. I have always said it was so dreadfully unfair to Granby. However, this niece is actually stranded in the country, and it would look so odd if I declined; besides, I shall like to have her; we shall mutually benefit one another. She will amuse me--rejuvenate me; be useful in the house--arrange flowers, write notes, read to me, dust the ornaments, make coffee and salad, and do all sorts of little odd jobs, and ultimately cover me with glory by making the match of the season!” “And on your part--what is to be your _rôle_?” “I will give her a charming home; I will have all the best men here, and I will take her everywhere; give her, if necessary, a couple of smart new ball-dresses, and that too delicious opera-mantle that has grown too small for me.” “Or you too large for it--which?” inquired Mrs. Sladen, with a slight elevation of her eyebrows. “Milly, how odious you can be!” “And about Major Langrishe?” continued Milly, unabashed. “Oh, Granby will be all right; but I must write to Fanny by this post, and say that I shall be delighted to have Lalla. Pour out the tea like a good little creature, whilst I scribble a line; the dâk goes down at six.” The other lady, who had kindled the fire and was now making tea, was not, as might be supposed, the mistress of the house, but merely an old friend who had dropped in for a chat this cold March afternoon. She was a slight, delicate-looking woman, with dark hair, dark eyes, and numerous lines on her thin, careworn face, though she was barely thirty. No one ever dreamt of calling Mrs. Sladen pretty, but most women voted her “a darling,” and all men “a little brick.” Married in her teens, before she knew her own mind (but when her relations had thoroughly made up theirs), to an elderly eligible, she had become, from the hour she left the altar, the slave of a selfish, irascible husband, whose mental horizon was bordered by two tables--the dinner-table and the card-table--and whose affections were entirely centred in his own portly person. Milly Fraser’s people were on the eve of quitting India; they were poor; they had a large and expensive family at home; otherwise they might have hesitated before giving their pretty Milly (she _was_ pretty in those days) to a man more than double her age, notwithstanding that he was drawing good pay, and his widow would enjoy a pension. They would have discovered--had they made inquiries--that he was heavily in debt to the banks; that he could not keep a friend or a servant; and that, after all, poor young Hastings, of the staff-corps, whom they had so ruthlessly snubbed, would have made a more satisfactory son-in-law.