Was there any real danger for him in her presence? If he asked himself this question nowadays, he was able to answer boldly in the negative. There might have been a time of peril, just one perilous interval when he was in some danger of stumbling; but he had pulled himself up in time, with an admirable discretion, he thought, and now felt as bold as a lion. After that morning with Lady Geraldine in the garden, he had never wavered. He had not been less kind or polite to Miss Lovel; he had only made a point of avoiding anything like that dangerous confidential friendship which had been so nearly arising between them. Of course every guest at the Castle knew all about the intended wedding directly things had been finally arranged. Lady Laura was not given to the keeping of secrets, and this important fact she communicated to all her particular friends with a radiant face, and a most triumphant manner. The two Fermor girls and Clarissa she invited to remain at Hale till after the wedding, and to act as bridesmaids. "My sisters Emily and Louisa will make two more," she said; "and that pretty little Miss Trellis, Admiral Trellis's daughter, will be the sixth--I shall have only six. We'll have a grand discussion about the dresses to-morrow morning. I should like to strike out something original, if it were possible. We shall see what Madame Albertine proposes. I have written to ask her for her ideas; but a milliner's ideas are so _bornees._" Lady Laura had obtained permission from her sister to enlist Clarissa in the ranks of the bridesmaids. "It would look so strange to exclude a pretty girl like that," she said. Whereupon Geraldine had replied rather coldly that she did not wish to do anything that was strange, and that Miss Lovel was at liberty to be one of her bridesmaids. She had studiously ignored the confession of jealousy made that night in her sister's dressing-room; nor had Laura ever presumed to make the faintest allusion to it. Things had gone so well since, and there seemed nothing easier than to forget that unwonted outbreak of womanly passion.