“Yes, he made a famous speech. He’s a fine boy, but overdid himself, and my wife has put him to bed. My wife’s too careful over the boy,” said John. “Ah, it is a great responsibility to have the care of children that are not your own,” said someone standing by. “I suppose so,” said Mr. Parke, smoothing his big moustache. The responsibility would not have moved John. He would have let Mar take his chance with the rest, and made no difference; but he had been well tutored, and made to see that this would never do. “A mother’s always anxious, you know,” he said. “As for me, I think it does more harm than good.” Letitia had, after much vexation, come to the conclusion that it was not a bad thing John should talk like this. It would show that there was no agreement between them for keeping Mar out of the way. And the ball was most brilliantly successful--more successful, everyone said, than any ball in the county had been for years. There was no shadow at all upon it--no reminder to the family that they were temporary tenants, and that in a few years they would all have to retire from the scene, which they all used, and rejoiced in as if it were their own. Mrs. Parke, in the satisfaction of finding all possible rivalry absent, felt that her feet were upon her native heath as she had never done: she talked to everybody of Duke’s prospects, and of the difference it made when he came home. She spoke of the younger boys who would have their own way to make, and must not think they would always have their father’s house to fall back upon. She spoke of John’s good intelligence with the “tenants,” and how well he was getting on with the Home Farm, which he had taken into his own hands. For this night only she forgot to be careful; she took the full enjoyment of the position, as if everything was her own. Nearly a dozen years she had been in the house, with full command of everything. The children had grown up in it. How could she help feeling that it was her own? She forgot all about guardians and executors, and it seemed to her for a blessed hour or two as if all difficulties had been smoothed away, and Duke was indeed the heir, and she herself all but Lady Frogmore. Moments of intoxication will come like this in everybody’s career--when we remember nothing that is against us, and are able to believe that all we wish is going to be fulfilled. It was remarked how Mrs. Parke’s eyes, not bright by nature, glittered, and how her little person seemed to swell with satisfaction and pride as she moved about doing the honors. But her aspect, I am afraid, was not regarded with sympathy by the greater part of her guests. We are all apt to believe that the outer world takes our view and regards matters from our standing point in such a moment of triumph. But as a matter of fact that is precisely the time when it does not do so. Letitia’s neighbors whispered to each other that Mrs. Parke looked