"And you refused him!" shrieked the indignant dowager. "That's what I call flying in the face of Providence. This is the second chance you've had within two years, Lady Cecil Chudleigh, and I hope I may live to wish you joy of the third; but I freely confess I don't expect to do so." This sort of expostulation is by no means pleasant to hear, and poor Cecil had to listen patiently to much harping on the same string. She was familiar with every variation which such a theme can undergo in the hands of a skilful composer,--the minor wailings and lamentations, the brilliant crescendos of feminine mockery, the bass grumblings and sharp forte passages of anger, the peevish rallentandos and diminuendos. The unhappy girl bore it all, but she suffered acutely. The change to Nasedale did not set her free from her aunt's lectures; for considerate Mrs. Mountjoy allotted two charming bed-rooms, with a pretty sitting-room between them, to the two ladies; and here, on rainy days, Cecil enjoyed a great deal of her aunt's society. "I don't want to detain you here if you'd rather be in the billiard-room, or making yourself sticky with _décalcomanie_ amongst those frivolous girls in the drawing-room. What regiments of girls there are in the world! and what in goodness' name is to become of them all, I wonder!" exclaimed the dowager, parenthetically. "As to the men the Mountjoys have collected, I never saw so many married fogies gathered together in one house; and the way they stuff themselves at luncheon is something dreadful. Tiffin, indeed! I'd tiffin them if they were my visitors. A glass of dry sherry at thirty-five shillings a dozen and a picnic biscuit is all they'd get between breakfast and dinner from me." But Nasedale was a very pleasant place, in spite of the elderly fogies who over-ate themselves at luncheon, and the frivolous young ladies who devoted themselves to the decoration of cups and saucers that wouldn't bear washing, and dessert plates the painted splendours of which rarely survived the ordeal of preserved ginger or guava jelly. Hospitality reigned supreme in the comfortable mansion. People did as they liked. The scenery for twenty miles round was superb; and if Mr. Mountjoy was not quite so magnificent as the nabob who ordered "more curricles," the Nasedale stables supplied plenty of horses, and the Nasedale coach-houses contained every variety of modern vehicle for the accommodation of the visitors, from the omnibus which took the servants to church or the ladies to a county ball, to the miniature Croydon basket-chaise and the deliciously stumpy little pony, which the most timid of the décalcomaniacs was scarcely afraid to drive. After returning from a hurried run up to town, the judge astonished the dowager, and considerably disconcerted Cecil, by exclaiming in the middle of dinner: