Agatha, in a word, meant to do well for herself, and she was dimly grateful to her mother for having foreseen this situation and provided for it by a suitable education. She was probably thinking over the matter while she brushed her hair, for she was deeply absorbed. There was a knock at the door--a timid, deprecatory knock. "Oh, come in!" cried Agatha. The door opened and disclosed Mrs. Ingham-Baker, stout and cringing, in a ludicrous purple dressing-gown. "May I come and warm myself at your fire, dear?" she inquired humbly; "my own is so low." "That," said Agatha, "is because you are afraid of the servants." Mrs. Ingham-Baker closed the door and came towards the fire with surreptitious steps. It would not be truthful to say that she came on tiptoe, her build not warranting that mode of progression. Agatha watched her without surprise. Mrs. Ingham-Baker always moved like that in her dressing-gown. Like many ladies, she put on stealth with that garment. "How beautifully the Count plays!" said the mother. "Beautifully!" answered Agatha. And neither was thinking of Cipriani de Lloseta. Mrs. Ingham-Baker gave a little sigh, and contemplated her wool-work bedroom slippers with an affection which their appearance certainly did not warrant. There was a suggestion of bygone defeats in sigh and attitude--defeats borne with the resignation that followeth on habit. "I don't believe," she said, "that he will ever marry again." The girl tossed her pretty head. "I shouldn't think any one would have him!" She was not of the campaigners who admit defeat. Mrs. Ingham-Baker sighed again, and put out the other slipper. "He must be very rich!--a palace in Barcelona--a palace!" "Other people have castles in Spain," replied Agatha, without any of that filial respect which our grandmothers were pleased to affect. There was nothing old-fashioned or effete about Agatha--she was, on the contrary, essentially modern. The elder lady did not catch the allusion, and dived deep into thought. She supposed that Agatha had met and danced with other rich Spaniards, and could have any one of them by the mere raising of her little finger. Her attitude towards her daughter was that of an old campaigner who, having done well in a bygone time, has the good sense to recognise the deeper science of a modern warfare, being quite content with a small command in the rear. To carry out the simile, she now gathered from this conversational reconnaissance that the younger and abler general at the front was about to alter the object of attack. She had, in fact, come in not to warm, but to inform herself. "Mrs. Harrington seemed to take to Luke," said Agatha, behind her hair. "Yes," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, proceeding carefully, for she was well in hand--"wonderfully so! Poor Fitz seems to stand a very good chance of being cut out."