“Ah!” said Lady Frogmore. She brightened up, however, and added immediately, “I hear there is to be a tenants’ dinner and a ball. It will be a strange thing to me to find myself at a ball.” “No one there will look nicer,” said Duke, with filial flattery. “I don’t mind the ball,” he added. “That’s natural. Now that Letty’s out and me at home, and the others all old enough to like the fuss, a ball’s the best thing to have. It’s the tenants’ dinner that bothers me, Aunt Mary. Why should the tenants mind me? I’m nothing to them, only their landlord’s cousin. And I’m sure my father thinks so too, only he will not say.” “It is quite right,” said Lady Frogmore. “Oh, no, it is not quite right. I’m twenty-one and qualified to have an opinion. Oh, here’s Miss Hill. I hope you hadn’t any bother with the luggage, Miss Hill. I thought I’d better take care of Aunt Mary, and that you would rather the maid did it.” “You are quite right,” said Agnes a little stiffly. “We have managed everything, and Mary always likes to have you to herself.” “Dear Aunt Mary,” said Duke, squeezing her hand. “She has always been too good to me all my life.” Agnes Hill had by this time got something of the grim aspect which procures for a woman even in these enlightened days the title of old maid. She was taller and thinner than her sister, less soft of aspect and of tone than Mary, as indeed she always had been: and the sense of wrong that had over-clouded her mind for so many years, the separation from the child to whom she had given all the love of her heart, and who needed her, she felt, as much as she longed for him, had given her a look of protest and almost defiance, as of a woman injured by the world, which is the aspect associated by a world full of levity with that title. “A sour old maid,” Duke thought her, and he liked to get what he called “a rise” out of old Agnes. What a rise is, is imperfectly known to the present writer, or the etymology of the phrase, but at least it was not anything respectful. So that in this trio who now drove off to the Park there were two who loved each other dearly, and two who loved each other so little that it might be said by a little strain that they hated each other--notwithstanding that they had between them one bond of sympathy, which was certainly wanting between Duke and the relation whom he loved.