And very much amazed, and filled with great perturbation, those sweet girls were, when Mrs Edgerley came up to them, leaning upon Louis’s arm, bestowed upon them all a shower of those light perfumy kisses which Marian and Agnes remembered so well, and, declaring Lady Winterbourne far too young for a chaperone, took her place among them. Amazed as they were at this sudden renewal of old friendship, none of them desired to resist it; and before they were well aware, they found themselves engaged, the whole party, to Mrs Edgerley’s next “reception,” when “every one would be so charmed to see them!” “Positively, my love, you are looking quite lovely,” whispered the fine lady into the shrinking ear of Marian. “I always said so. I constantly told every one you were the most perfect little beauty in the world; and then that charming book of Miss Atheling’s, which every one was wild about! and your brother--now, do you know, I wish so very much to know your brother. Oh, I am sure you could persuade him to come to my Thursday. Tell him every one comes; no one ever refuses _me_! I shall send him a card to-morrow. Now, may I leave my cause in your hands?” “We will try,” said Marian, who, though she bore her new dignities with extraordinary self-possession on the whole, was undeniably shy of Agnes’s first fashionable patroness. The invitation was taken up as very good fun indeed, by all the others. They resolved to make a general assault upon Charlie, and went home in great glee with their undertaking. Nor was Charlie, after all, so hard to be moved as they expected. He twisted the pretty note in his big fingers with somewhat grim amusement, and said he did not mind. With this result Mrs Atheling showed the greatest delight, for the good mother began to speculate upon a wife for Charlie, and to be rather afraid of some humble beauty catching her boy’s eye before he had “seen the world.”