The Countess understood this sentence, and answered with rather more asperity than became a kind and condescending patron: "You need not trouble yourself to return to me, Miss Primrose, unless you please to accept of the instruction that I have provided for you. If I confer favours I expect to choose what favours I shall confer." Penelope made no reply, for her heart was full, and she thought of Mrs Greendale; but, under all this, the joy at the thought of her father's return kept her spirits from sinking. CHAPTER III. It was a very fine morning when Lord Spoonbill's gig was brought to the door to convey Penelope to London. The young lady was joyful even to tears. Hers was a joy of such intoxicating and almost bewildering nature, that it became necessary for her to exercise some restraint over herself, lest she should make herself ridiculous by ungoverned prating. Lord Spoonbill was also pleased with the commission which he had given to himself, to conduct the young lady to town. But his pleasure was mingled with thoughtfulness, and alloyed by meditating and contriving. He not been inexperienced in the winning of female affection, but he was conscious that there was in the mind of Penelope something widely different from and far superior to those with whom his former intimacies had been. Deeply and seriously did he endeavour to revolve in his mind the advice which he had received from his friend Erpingham. But his lordship's mind was unfortunately too narrow and contracted to afford room for anything to turn round in it. He tried and tried, but all to no purpose, to understand what Erpingham could possibly mean, when he said that a woman is not fit for a wife who can forgive an offer of a different description. His lordship, on the contrary, thought that a woman is not fit for a wife who is of an unforgiving disposition.