“There is no play at the Parminsters,” said Katherine Massarene in a tone, low, but so clear that Mouse reddened angrily, and several persons near smiled indiscreetly, despite themselves. Mrs. Massarene went crestfallen to her carriage. If a duchess, daughter, wife, and mother of dukes, was not a distinguished acquaintance, who was? And if a party gathered together to meet princes could be called a menagerie, where was salvation to be found? She was a meek woman, used to endure bullying with patience, but now and then her bile would rise, as she expressed it, under the insolence of that lovely lady who yet exercised over her the fascination of the brilliant-coated snake for the humble barndoor hen. She resented, but she dare not rebel. She went to the assembly at Parminster House sorely exercised in her mind and vaguely wondering what could be amiss with a courtly crowd, in which the first person she saw was her future sovereign, who had dined there. “Well, _he_ comes because there are certain dishes they do so remarkably well in this house,” said Daddy Gwyllian, of whom she asked for information, as he took her to have an ice. “But Lady Kenny wouldn’t trouble herself to show here; it’s not her style; it’s deadly respectable. You see she’s too young to bore herself at present for the sake of a sauce.” Mrs. Massarene sighed and reflected that the study of society was a service which required to be learned very young. Mouse felt herself read and understood by Billy’s daughter, and she did not like it. When she dined at Harrenden House or made them give a ball there, the evenings were spoiled to her by the sense that those large, calm, dark violet eyes of the young woman of the house were upon her and all her doings. Who would ever have supposed that such a cockatrice’s egg of irony and insolence could have been laid and hatched in such a nest of respectful subserviency as was Harrenden House? The air, the manner, the style, even the glance of this young woman were odious to her; the idea of Billy’s daughter daring to be cold and distant to herself, and pretending to be a gentlewoman in her own right! What possible business had a young woman, so born, to arched insteps, beautiful hands, and a low melodious voice? The thing was preposterous! “Born in a garret, in a kitchen bred,” her natural sphere the still-room or the laundry, how could she venture to carry herself with dignity at a Drawing-room, and answer patronage with cold disdain? “I really think,” she reflected, “that she must be a natural daughter of Framlingham’s, whom he has got the Massarenes to adopt. She has just his caustic way of saying things, and it would account for her going to India.”