“You ought to lay by half of it,” old Lady Betsinda Molyneux was saying at the very moment when Lucy, with tranquil pleasure, aided by Jock, in a state of half-resentful, half-happy excitement, was putting a set of pretty books into the low book-shelves that lined her little sitting-room; “you ought to lay by one half of it. Good life! a girl like that to get the advantage of being in your house at all! Instead of petting her, and getting her everything that you can think of, she ought to be too thankful if you put her in the housemaid’s closet. If you don’t show a little wisdom now I will despair of you, my dear,” the old lady said. She was an old lady of the first fashion; but she was, all the same, a very grimy old lady with a mustache, and a complexion which suggested coal dust rather than _poudre de riz_. Her clothes would have been worth a great deal to an antiquary, notwithstanding that they were all shaped, more or less, in accordance with the fashion; but they gave Lady Betsinda the air of an animated rag-bag; and she wore a profusion of lace, clouds of black upon her mantle, and ruffles of white about her thin and dingy neck; but it would have been a misnomer, and also an insult, to call that lace white. It was frankly dirty, and toned to an indescribable color by years and wear. She was worth a small fortune where she stood with all her old trumpery upon her; and yet a clean old woman in a white cap and apron would have been a much fairer spectacle. Her rings flashed as she moved her quick bony wrinkled hands, which were of a color as indescribable as her lace. It would have been hard to have seen any signs of noble race in Lady Betsinda’s hands; and yet the queer old figure hung round with festoons of lace, and clothed in old black satin as thick as a modern party-wall, could not have been anything but that of a woman of rank. Her garments smelled not of myrrh and frankincense, but of camphor, in which they were always put away to preserve them; and the number of times these garments had been through the hands of Lady Betsinda’s patient maid, and the number of stitches that were required to keep them always in order, was more than anybody, except the hard-worked official who had charge of the old lady’s wardrobe, could say.