The next day was one of the brightest in a brilliant July, and Mrs. Tredethlyn’s shell-shaped barouche was waiting before the ponderous stuccoed portico at eleven o’clock. Francis had left the house half an hour before on foot, bent on that mysterious expedition a little way out of town which he took so frequently now. Maude and Julia came down-stairs at a quarter after eleven; and Miss Grunderson skipped up the stone steps two minutes afterwards, with the bluest bonnet and the pinkest parasol in London. “How do you like the new contrast?” she inquired, twirling the pink parasol triumphantly, when she had adjusted her flounces and furbelows to the best of her ability on the front seat of Mrs. Tredethlyn’s carriage. “I remember, when I was at school, pink and blue together were thought bad taste, but now they’re quite _de rigger_. Ness pas ker say joli dong? s’p’tite ombrelle?” demanded Miss Grunderson, bursting into French. “Vingt-huit shillings, ma chère! Ness pas trèscher, chère? Et le boutiquier ne voudrait pas prendre un six-sous là dessous, quoique je l’ai marchandé comme un juif,” she added, with a slap-dash rendering of the language which was peculiar to her. The summer day was delightful, and Maude’s spirits, which had been rather depressed of late, rose with the sunshine and the pure air, as the high-stepping bays left Stuccoville behind them for the pleasant country road, and the rustic odours of suburban gardens. And then, when she found herself amongst her own birds and flower-beds, it was hard to believe that she was no longer a girl, with a girl’s careless happiness in beautiful things. She sat under a great drooping willow, whose lowest branches dipped into the water, and watched her dogs gambolling with Rosa on the grass. “I was like that, once,” she thought, “before I knew of papa’s difficulties--before I sold myself for money. I fancied that it was a heroic thing to marry the man I did not love, in the hope that my esteem might be some poor repayment of his generous devotion--his noble trust in my father. But I know now that I could do him no baser wrong than become his wife. I know it now, when he himself has learnt to despise and to avoid me, even when I am anxious to win back his regard.”