At the beginning of their talk it was clear that Lady Maxwell wished to ingratiate herself. A friendly observer would have thought that she was trying to make a stranger feel more at ease in this house and circle, where she herself was a familiar guest. Betty Leven, catching sight of the pair from the other side of the room, said to herself, with inward amusement, that Marcella was "realising the wife." At any rate, for some time Lady Maxwell talked with sympathy, with effusion even, to her companion. In the first place she told her the story of their hostess. Thirty years before, Mrs. Allison, the daughter and heiress of a Leicestershire squire, had married Henry Allison, old Lord Ancoats's second son, a young captain in the Guards. They enjoyed three years of life together; then the chances of a soldier's career, as interpreted by two high-minded people, took Henry Allison out to an obscure African coast, to fight one of the innumerable "little wars" of his country. He fell, struck by a spear, in a single-file march through some nameless swamp; and a few days afterwards the words of a Foreign Office telegram broke a pining woman's heart. Old Lord Ancoats's death, which followed within a month or two, was hastened by the shock of his son's loss; and before the year was out the eldest son, who was sickly and unmarried, also died, and Mrs. Allison's boy, a child of two, became the owner of Castle Luton. The mother saw herself called upon to fight down her grief, to relinquish the quasi-religious life she had entered upon, and instead to take her boy to the kingdom he was to rule, and bring him up there. "And for twenty-two years she has lived a wonderful life here," said Marcella; "she has been practically the queen of a whole countryside, doing whatever she pleased, the mother and friend and saint of everybody. It has been all very paternal and beautiful, and--abominably Tory and tyrannous! Many people, I suppose, think it perfect. Perhaps I don't. But then, I know very well I can't possibly disagree with her a tenth part as strongly as she disagrees with me." "Oh! but she admires you so much," cried Letty, with effusion; "she thinks you mean so nobly!" Marcella opened her eyes, involuntarily wondering a little what Lady Tressady might know about it. "Oh! we don't hate each other," she said, rather drily, "in spite of politics. And my husband was Ancoats's guardian." "Dear me!" said Letty. "I should think it wasn't easy to be guardian to fifty thousand a year." Marcella did not answer--did not, indeed, hear. Her look had stolen across to Mrs. Allison--a sad, affectionate look, in no way meant for Lady Tressady. But Letty noticed it. "I suppose she adores him," she said. Marcella sighed. "There was never anything like it. It frightens one to see." "And that, of course, is why she won't marry Lord Fontenoy?" Marcella started, and drew away from her companion.