“It’s all a deep laid scheme,” continued the dowager, behind her fan. “What that woman has against my poor dear John I can’t tell, but it is she that has done it. And mark my words, Frogmore----” “How many more words am I to mark,” said Frogmore peevishly--then he added, in the freedom of close relationship: “All you say about poor Lady Sillinger is the merest nonsense. She’s as good a woman as ever lived.” “Mark my words, Frogmore,” repeated the dowager, “that girl will never rest till she has got you out of the way.” “Me!” he laughed, “set your mind at rest,” he said, “I am not in her way at all. She means to make a friend of me.” “She’ll make a friend of you, and then she’ll make you something quite different. She will never be happy,” said Lady Frogmore, “till she has got us all out of the way.” “Oh! come, come! We don’t live in the fourteenth century,” Frogmore said. And next day, notwithstanding all these prognostications of harm, John and Letitia were married, and set off for their honeymoon. And whatever her intentions might be there was no longer any possibility of shutting out the Honorable Mrs. John Parke from the amenities of the family. She was kissed. She was blessed. Old slippers were flung after her, and if she had been the most desirable wife in the world, no more could have been done by the family to put the best face upon this event before the eyes of a too quick-sighted world. CHAPTER III. Notwithstanding the dissatisfaction of his family, John Parke began his married life very comfortably, and it is doubtful whether he had ever been so happy in his life before. Lord Frogmore had let the newly married pair have a house of his in Berkshire, in a good hunting neighborhood, and not very far from town. John was by no means a great hunting man, but it is a respectable occupation to fall back upon when one has nothing else to do, and he was able to keep up his character and take a moderate interest in all that was going on without very much hard riding or sacrifice of comfort. His wife rode with him to the admiration of all the hunting field. But it was not in that way that Letitia meant to gain distinction. She had known too much about horses in her earlier days. She did not intend to be a hunting lady. Still it is always something to be known for one of the best horsewomen in your county. If you do not hunt after that it shows that you have higher aspirations. And it was very good for John to know that there was one thing at least which would have made any man proud of his wife. What Letitia was much more anxious about was that everybody should call. She procured a list of all the county families within reach, and carefully compared their names with those on the visiting cards that were left at Greenpark. And gradually her high aspirations were carried out. Gradually, not all at once, but under the weighty influence of the peerage and the hunting, most people came.