Now that Usk and Félicia were engaged, an impartial observer, with a mind appreciative of irony, might have enjoyed watching the attitudes assumed by the different persons concerned. Maimie, openly contemptuous for a moment, became calm and tolerant after the first shock of surprise, allowing Félicia to see that she did not take the matter at all seriously. If Félicia chose to break a country heart for pastime, it was no one’s business but her own, and the owner of the heart had only himself to thank if he took for love the frame of mind induced by propinquity succeeding _ennui_. Félicia, feeling bound to justify her action in Maimie’s eyes, overdid her part wofully. She raised Usk to the seventh heaven of delight by what seemed to him her utter self-surrender. He had never imagined that she could give herself up to him so unreservedly, although he had quite expected that she would monopolise his time and services, as she did. But that she should wish--nay, order him to be at her side all day, this filled him with a sense of wholly undeserved joy, since he could not tell that she was playing with one eye on Maimie. It was not long before the engagement became known in the county, although it was not to be publicly announced until six months had elapsed after Mr Steinherz’s death. Local interest in the event was tremendous, and the dwellers in the neighbourhood learned to watch almost daily for the Castle dogcart, with the ‘young lord’ driving, and the beautiful lady muffled in furs at his side. Félicia’s neglect of her complexion was positively heroic at this time, but fortunately the weather was mild, and Maimie showed herself truly forgiving where face-washes were concerned. “I guessed the fault was in the companion, and not the climate, when you wouldn’t go out driving with me, Félicia,” said Lord Caerleon, laughing, as he helped her out of the cart one day, and Félicia had the grace to blush. “I don’t see but I’m real English now, just like Phil,” she answered brightly, for Maimie’s benefit. Perhaps the happiest of the onlookers at this juncture was Lady Caerleon. She forced herself to rejoice in Usk’s happiness, in a way only possible to a woman whose tendency through life had been to choose the most disagreeable path that offered itself, in the conviction that it was the right one. Her husband, much as he admired Félicia’s beauty, grumbled a little in private that Usk should choose an American bride, and one who took no interest in social questions, but Lady Caerleon persisted that love would set everything right. Félicia had even learnt to like the country since Usk had come home, and very soon, no doubt, she would be taking an active interest in the Temperance cause. In the kindness of her heart the mother even petted Maimie, for whom she still felt an instinctive distrust, and devised all sorts of little pleasures for her, to soften the loneliness that fell to her lot now that Félicia had forsaken her so completely.