That there was much truth at the bottom of Lady Guernsey’s remarks, no one knew better than the mother of the gentle girl who, both by nature and education, was so ill-qualified to fight, through the arduous campaign of a London season, the fierce battle of life. If Lady Millicent could be said to feel interest in, and affection for, any human being save herself, that human being was her unselfish, yielding, and not over-brilliant elder daughter. It would have been hard indeed for anyone living habitually with Rhoda Vavasour not to appreciate the gentleness of her disposition, and not to admire the unassuming rectitude of purpose which was one of her most striking characteristics; and yet, partly perhaps (at least so said that far-seeing Horace) because she seemed so good, no one, not even--with the exception of Lady Millicent--those of her own household, took so kindly to steady, quiet Rhoda, as they did to giddy-pated Kate--Kate, whom her brothers pronounced to be unfortunately plain, but who was one of the “jolliest” girls that you could ever hope to meet with, and who was withal as wilful, and as little inclined to do right on principle, as the less popular Rhoda was known to be the reverse. “I wonder, and I always shall, what has made mamma make up her mighty mind to spend the season in London,” Kate remarked one morning early in March to her elder sister, as the two were taking the daily constitutional, of which they were both in different degrees and fashions wearied, through the shrubberies of Gillingham; “everyone--Horace among the number--made so sure that this year would pass like all the rest, and that we should stick for ever at horrid old Gillingham.” “Don’t call it horrid, Kate; I am sure that I shall never like any place one half so well; and when we have to leave it--” “I for one should be ready to jump out of my very skin for joy,” cried Kate, dancing forward with a kind of sidelong motion, not remarkable for gracefulness, but very suggestive of the state of mind to be expected from this young lady on the occasion of the final bidding adieu to the beautiful home of her childhood. “To think,” Kate said, sobering down after her momentary ebullition of feeling, “to think that _never_--never, I mean, as a matter of rule--should we be walking here, in this same walk, between those stupid, odious trees again! O, Rhoda dear, how _can_ you take everything so quietly? I do believe that if you were to be told that our going to London was over, and that we were to stay here for the rest of our lives, you would be quite contented. So long as the school went on, and you could listen to Mr. Wallingford’s stupid sermons, you would never break your heart about anything.”