“I’m sure it’s a very nice thing to have such a good mamma,” said Mrs. Bohun indulgently. “Don’t you think so, Clarissa?” “Undoubtedly.” The tone in which Lady Florencecourt gave this short answer, caused Nouna to look up at her. “Do you know my mother?” she asked abruptly. “I have not that honour,” answered Lady Florencecourt, many degrees below zero. Quite unmoved this time by her hostess’s frigidity, Nouna mused a few moments with her eyes fixed on the lady’s face. Then she said slowly: “I believe Lord Florencecourt knows mamma though----” She stopped short, bewildered by the sudden change these few words brought about in the placid, self-satisfied countenance. Then, as there was a moment’s awkward pause, she went on hurriedly--“At least, I know mamma has an old portrait--one of those old-fashioned dark things with glass over them, that is like him. I knew when I met him first at the barracks that I had seen his face somewhere, and when I thought, I remembered the picture.” Now Nouna had begun to speak in all innocence, but when she noticed that her words had some magical power of discomposing the woman who had been discourteous to her, she mischievously slackened her tone, and watched the effect with much interest. Lady Florencecourt’s square heavy face was not capable of any very vivid or varied expression when her usual stolid self-complacency had been frightened out of it. But the lower features quivered slightly, and a vixenish look, which boded ill for her husband’s peace during their next _tête-à-tête_, brought a spark of angry brightness into her light eyes. Her next speech, and the tone in which it was uttered, gave the same impression. “Very possibly,” she said in a voice which implied an offensive doubt. “Of course, my husband, when he was a subaltern in India, gave his portrait right and left to all sorts of persons, as young men will do.” “In India! He has been in India! Oh, then that accounts for it. He must have met my mother there. I’ll ask him.” And as the voices of the gentlemen were heard in the hall, Nouna prepared for a spring at the door. Lady Florencecourt laid a heavy hand peremptorily on her arm. “No,” she said in a suddenly subdued voice, retaining her hold on the fragile wrist, and looking down into the little creature’s eyes with some entreaty and even fear in her own. “Don’t tease Lord Florencecourt about it now. I--I want to talk to you.” She drew Nouna with her towards an ottoman, and invited Mrs. Bohun to join them.