The news which she had learned from Doctor Joyce, and had in her brief pencil-note communicated to her husband, was horribly annoying to Lady Muriel Kilsyth. To have her party broken up--and there was no doubt that, as soon as the actual condition of affairs was known, many would at once take to flight--was bad enough; but to have an infectious disorder in the house, and to be necessarily compelled to keep up a semblance of sympathy with the patient labouring under that disorder, even if she were not required to visit and tend her, was to Lady Muriel specially galling; more specially galling as she happened not to possess the smallest affection for the individual in question, indeed to regard her rather with dislike than otherwise. When Lady Muriel Inchgarvie married Kilsyth of Kilsyth,--the Inchgarvie estates being heavily involved, and her brother the Earl, who had recently succeeded to the title, strongly counselling the match,--she agreed to love, honour, and obey the doughty chieftain whom she espoused; but she by no means undertook any responsibilities with regard to the two children by his former marriage. The elder of these, Ronald, was just leaving Eton when his stepmother appeared upon the scene; and as he had since been at once gazetted to the Life-guards, and but rarely showed in his father's house, he had caused Lady Muriel very little anxiety. But it was a very different affair with Madeleine. She had the disadvantage of being perpetually _en évidence_; of being very pretty; of causing blundering new acquaintances to say, "Impossible, Lady Muriel, that this can be your daughter!" of riling her stepmother in every possible way--notably by her perfect high-breeding, her calm quiet ignoring of intended slights, her determinate persistence in keeping up the proper relations with her father, and her invariable politeness--nothing but politeness--to her stepmother. One is necessarily cautious of using strong terms in these days of persistent repression of all emotions; but it is scarcely too much to say that Lady Muriel hated her stepdaughter very cordially. They were too nearly of an age for the girl to look up to the matron, or for the matron to feel a maternal interest in the girl. They were too nearly of an age for the elder not to feel jealous of the younger--of her personal attractions, and of the influence which she undoubtedly exercised over her father. Not that Lady Muriel either laid herself out for attraction, or was so devotedly attached to her husband as to desire the monopoly of his affection. By nature she was hard, cold, self-contained, and very proud. Portionless as she had been, and desirable as it was that she should marry a rich man, she had refused several offers from men more coeval with her than the husband she at last accepted, simply because they were made by men who were wealthy, and nothing else. Either birth or talent would, in conjunction with wealth, have won her; but Mr.