how she could make the best of it and reconcile herself to the inevitable. He would be successful in his profession, that there seemed no doubt of now--he would reach, perhaps, the bench, and then Lucy might be Lady Durant. Lady Curtis shrugged her shoulders at this prospect. She was apt to gibe at her own position, and talk of “we Commoners;” but legal honours of that description were lowlier than any lowliness which could be affected by the head of a great county family, tenth baronet, with dormant titles in his race which he did not care to claim. Lady Durant! “granddaughter-in-law of old Durant, you know, the saddler.” This was what would be said. Lady Curtis thought she could hear the very sound of the voices lightly tripping over these syllables. To be sure many greater ladies than she had accepted the sons of _parvenus_ for their daughters. Duchesses did it every day; but then dukes were made for that sort of thing, she said to herself with a smile; were they not a kind of coroneted steam-engines to drag up the lower classes? very different from us, Commoners. There was always the woolsack it is true, an institution which does a great deal for the _noblesse_ of the robe. With a whimsical half-amusement she began to calculate whether she was likely to live to see Lewis Lord Chancellor. He might do it (if he was ever going to do it) in twenty years. Twenty years would suffice as well as a hundred. Lady Curtis was but forty-seven, there was no particular reason why she should not live as long as that, and such an elevation of course would very much sweeten the Lady Durant.