"What on earth do you mean then?--what are you talking about?" Lady Falkingham's countenance assumed an expression of alarm, wonder, and displeasure. "Oh, how can I tell you?--you, mamma, who never did anything weak, or foolish, in your life! Do not look at me, mamma, with those stern and reproachful eyes, or I can never confess it." "Blanche, you alarm me more than I can describe. Do you mean that you love any one better than the man whom you have accepted as your husband,--the excellent, amiable, high-minded Lord Glenrith, who is so sincerely devoted to you?" "Oh, mamma! I do value him, and I render him justice, indeed; and I love him in a kind of way----" Lady Blanche was each moment becoming more alive to the ingratitude, the duplicity, with which she had acted towards Lord Glenrith, and began to wish she had not opened the subject at all to her mother. "Explain yourself, Blanche," repeated her mother: "whom are you talking of? Is it Mr. Wroxholme, whom you met at Paris?" "Oh dear, no, mamma. It is Captain De Molton!" And she no longer found any difficulty in speaking his name. Mr. Wroxholme might be a very good man, but, in her eyes, was immeasurably inferior to the object of her preference. Those who are in love, always resent as an injury the suspicion that they could find charms in any other than the one person to whose merits they are alive. "Captain De Molton!" exclaimed Lady Falkingham; "why, I scarcely ever heard you mention him! You ought to have told me this before." "I never knew till to-day what were his feelings towards me, mamma!" "I must say your lover has chosen a good moment for avowing his passion! It proves an honourable mind! And he wishes to induce you to break off your marriage with a man in every way calculated to make you happy? For what? He has scarcely bread to eat himself, and his father has none to give him." "He knows all that, mamma, and he is going away this moment. He does not ask me to marry him. He says he is not worthy of me." "Oh, Blanche! Blanche! and you allow this man, who tells you he cannot marry, to make love to you, while you are the affianced wife of his friend! I should never have thought a daughter of mine would have acted in so improper, so unprincipled a manner. Heaven knows, I cannot accuse myself of having neglected my children. You have all had every attention paid to your minds and your morals. Each hour had its avocation; you were never permitted to read a book which Miss Strickland or myself had not previously perused; you were never allowed to walk beyond the shrubberies and the park! If, like some mothers, I had neglected the essentials for the sake of accomplishments----but the religion-master always came three times a week! How on earth can such low notions of moral rectitude ever have found entrance into your head, or your heart?"