Mr. Tredgold’s obstinacy was thus as great a blow to Lady Jane as if she herself had been impoverished by it. She felt the ground cut from under her feet, and her confidence in human nature destroyed. If you cannot make sure of a vulgar old father’s weakness for his favourite child whom he has spoiled outrageously all her life, of what can you make sure? Lady Jane was disappointed, wounded, mortified. She felt less sure of her own good sense and intuitions, which is a very humbling thing--not to speak of the depreciation in men’s minds of her judgment which was likely to follow. Indeed, it did follow, and that at once, people in general being very sorry for poor Charlie Somers, who had been taken in so abominably, and who never would have risked the expenses of married life, and a wife trained up to every extravagance, if he had not felt sure of being indemnified; and, what was still worse, they all agreed he never would have taken such a strong step--for he was a cautious man, was Charlie, notwithstanding his past prodigalities--if he had not been so pushed forward and kept up to the mark by Lady Jane. The thing that Lady Jane really fell back on as a consolation in the pressure of these painful circumstances was that she had not allowed Algy to make himself ridiculous by any decisive step in respect to the “little prim one,” as he called Katherine. This Lady Jane had sternly put down her foot upon. She had said at once that Katherine was not the favourite, that nothing could be known as to how the old man would leave her, along with many other arguments which intimidated the young one. As a patter of fact, Lady Jane, naturally a very courageous woman, was afraid of Algy’s mother, and did not venture to commit herself in any way that would have brought her into conflict with Lady Scott, which, rather than any wisdom on her part, was the chief reason which had prevented additional trouble on that score. Poor Charlie Somers had no mother nor any female relation of importance to defend him. Lady Jane herself ought to have been his defence, and it was she who had led him astray. It was not brought against her open-mouthed, or to her face. But she felt that it was in everybody’s mind, and that her reputation, or at least her prestige, had suffered.