Of course Julia declared that she had breakfasted--as completely as a companion had any right to breakfast, she inferred by her manner; so the two ladies adjourned to their apartments. Mrs. Tredethlyn found her maid in her dressing-room, oppressed by such tender anxieties with regard to the adjustment of Maude’s bonnet and shawl, that she was not to be shaken off till her mistress stepped into the barouche, and even then contrived to be the medium of communication with the coachman, to the setting aside of a stolid Jeames, who was so utterly weary of life in general as not even to be often interested in other people’s business. The confidante in white muslin is apt to have a hard time of it when Tilburina’s affairs go badly; but Julia endured her burden with sublime patience. Maude, bewailing the inconstancy of her husband one moment, and lauding his devotion in the next, might now and then degenerate into an inconsistent bore; but, at the worst, she was more endurable than Maude insolently happy,--a radiant floating creature, all lace flounces and gauzy sleeves, like one of Mr. Buckner’s portraits. Julia enacted her part of confidante very creditably during the drive from Stuccoville to Petersham, and submitted graciously to be left in the carriage, in a shady curve of the winding road, with the Skye terriers and the last new novel to keep her company, while Mrs. Tredethlyn went alone to face her rival. Perhaps Maude’s heart sank just a little with something akin to fear, as she tripped along the dusty road in dainty high-heeled boots and flounced petticoats, whose embroideries flickered to and fro in shadowy arabesques upon the sunlit ground. She was not at all strong-minded. Imagine Waller’s Sacharissa stepping out of her coach in Eastchepe, with a negro page behind her, and one of the Duchess of Portsmouth’s favourite spaniels nestling in the perfumed lining of her muff, bent upon a visit to a money-lender; or Pope’s Belinda alighting from her sedan to attend a meeting of creditors. Imagine anything that is incongruous, or absurd, or impossible, and it will be scarcely more out of keeping than this picture of Maude Tredethlyn going alone to meet her rival, under the shelter of a point-lace parasol. And yet this injured young wife was as sincerely miserable as if she had worn sackcloth and ashes, or the sombre draperies which Miss Bateman has made so familiar to us in her impersonation of the jilted Leah.