She spoke with severity, as to a chidden child, as she lighted a cigarette and put it between her roseleaf lips. She was in the boudoir of Harrenden House, and Margaret Massarene listened in humble and dejected silence to the rebuke. The bone of contention was represented by two visiting cards, on which were printed respectively Lady Mary Altringham and Lady Linlithgow: the bearers of those names had just been turned away from the gate below by order of the fair consor, and the mistress of Harrenden House, being a primitive person, to whom a want of hospitality appeared a crime, was swallowing her tears under difficulty. “But surely these ladies are high and all that, ma’am?” she pleaded piteously in her ignorance. “They were born if you mean that,” replied Mouse with great impatience. “Lady Mary was a Fitz-Frederick and the Linlithgow was a Knotts-Buller. But they are nowhere. They have put themselves out of court. No one worth thinking of knows them. They can do you no good, and they can do you a great deal of harm.” Mrs. Massarene puckered up in her fingers the fine cambric of her handkerchief. “But I know Lady Mary, ma’am!” “Drop her, then.” “What have she done, ma’am?” “Oh, lots of things; gone wrong stupidly, turned the county against her; her boy’s tutor, and a young artist who went down to paint the ballroom, and all that kind of silly public sort of thing; people don’t speak to her even in the hunting-field. She can’t show herself at Court. The girls were presented by their grandmother. She is completely _tarée_--completely!” The portrait was somewhat heavily loaded with colors, but she knew that her hearer would not be impressed by semi-tones or monochrome, and she really could not have Lady Mary coming and going at Harrenden House. “As for the other woman,” she added, “there is nothing actually against her, but she is bad form. They are as poor as Job and riddled with debts; they have even been glad to let their eldest daughter marry the banker of their own county borough!” To her humble companion, to whom not so very long before a banker’s clerk had seemed a functionary to be addressed as Sir, and viewed with deep respect, this social error did not carry a deep dye of iniquity. But she abandoned Lady Linlithgow; for the other culprit she ventured to plead. “Lady Mary was so very kind to my child,” she murmured timidly. “When Kathleen was at school, before we came over, Lady Mary’s own daughters----” “What has that to do with it? I tell you her daughters go out with their grandmother. You know nothing of all these things. You must do as you are told. You remember your blunder about my aunt Courcy?”