‘Oh, she’s lovely—lovely!’ Lady Forster is saying with enthusiasm. ‘Such eyes, and with such a funny expression in them sometimes—sometimes, when she isn’t so dreadfully in earnest, as she generally is. After all, perhaps the earnestness is her charm. She is certainly the very sweetest thing! George’—she turns, looks round her, and, finding Crosby not present, laughs, and makes a little gesture with her hands—‘George will never be able to go back to his niggers.’ In her heart, being devoted to her only brother, she hopes this will be the case. ‘If you don’t take care, she will marry your brother,’ says Miss Prior from her low seat. She is protecting her complexion from the light of the big lamp near her by a fan far bigger than the lamp. ‘Well, why not?’ says Lady Forster, who detests Josephine. ‘A girl like that—a mere nobody—the daughter of an obscure country parson?’ ‘Oh, not so very obscure!’ says Lady Muriel, in her gentle way. ‘Mr. Barry is very well connected; I have met some of his people.’ ‘Still, hardly a match for Mr. Crosby.’ Josephine waves her fan lightly, yet with a suggestion of temper. Her mother, who has subsided into a seat, listens with an interest that borders on agitation to the answer to this speech. On it hangs her decision about the girl at the Cottage. If Crosby’s people support Crosby in his infatuation for that silly child at the Rectory, then—nothing is left to Josephine. ‘Do you know,’ says Lady Forster, ‘I don’t feel a bit like that. Let us all be happy, is my motto. I think’—thoughtfully—‘I am not sure, mind you—but I think if George wanted to marry a barmaid, or something like that, I should enter a gentle protest. But if he has set his heart on this delightful Susan——Isn’t she a heart, Muriel? Such a ducky child!’ ‘I thought her delightful, and her brother, too,’ says Lady Muriel, laughing at Katherine’s exaggerations. ‘She is decidedly pretty, at all events. Even more than that.’ ‘Oh, a great deal more,’ says Captain Lennox, who has come into the room with some of the other men. ‘And of very good family, too,’ says Lady Millbank, who is dining with them. The Barrys, as has been said, are a connection of hers, but always up to this—on account of their poverty—scarcely acknowledged, and kept carefully in the shade. But now, with this brilliant chance of a marriage for Susan, she is willing to bring them suddenly into the fuller light. ‘But penniless,’ puts in Josephine carefully. ‘Ah! what do pennies matter?’ says Lady Forster sweetly, but with a faint grin at her husband, who is near her. He, too, feels small affection for the stately Josephine. ‘And if George fancies her—why, it will keep him from marrying a squaw. They don’t call them squaws in Africa, do they? Something worse, perhaps.’ ‘Not much difference,’ says Captain Lennox. ‘But the squaws, as a rule, wear more clothing than the Zulu ladies, and that might perhaps——’