When the fly jumbled into Bellevue, the lighted window, which always illuminated the little street, shone brighter than ever in the profound darkness of this late night, when all the respectable inhabitants for more than an hour had been asleep. Papa and Mamma, somewhat drowsily, yet with a capacity for immediate waking-up only to be felt under these circumstances, had unanimously determined to sit up for the girls; and the window remained bright, and the inmates wakeful, for a full hour after the rumbling “fly,” raising all the dormant echoes of the neighbourhood, had rolled off to its nightly shelter. The father and the mother listened with the most perfect patience to the detail of everything, excited in spite of themselves by their children’s companionship with “the great,” yet considerably resenting, and much disappointed by the failure of those grand visions, in which all night the parental imagination had pictured to itself an admiring assembly hanging upon the looks of those innocent and simple girls. Mr and Mrs Atheling on this occasion were somewhat disposed, we confess, to make out a case of jealousy and malice against the fashionable guests of Mrs Edgerley. It was always the way, Papa said. They always tried to keep everybody down, and treated aspirants superciliously; and in the climax of his indignation, under his breath, he added something about those “spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes.” Mrs Atheling did not quote Shakespeare, but she was quite as much convinced that it was their “rank in life” which had prevented Agnes and Marian from taking a sovereign place in the gay assembly they had just left. The girls themselves gave no distinct judgment on the subject; but now that the first edge of her mortification had worn off, Agnes began to have great doubts upon this matter. “We had no claim upon them--not the least,” said Agnes; “they never saw us before; we were perfect strangers; why should they trouble themselves about us, simply because I had written a book?” “Do not speak nonsense, my dear--do not tell me,” said Mrs Atheling, with agitation: “they had only to use their own eyes and see--as if they often had such an opportunity! My dear, I know better; you need not speak to me!” “And everybody has read your book, Agnes--and no doubt there are scores of people who would give anything to know you,” said Papa with dignity. “The author of _Hope Hazlewood_ is a different person from Agnes Atheling. No, no--it is not that they don’t know your proper place; but they keep everybody down as long as they can. Now, mind, one day you will turn the tables upon them; I am very sure of that.”