The Marchioness had "taken up" Signer da Capo's favourite pupil, concerning whom the gushing Italian was wont to tell wonderful things, while he was pretending to administer instruction to the Lady Angelica, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of the most noble the Marchioness, who had a remarkably pretty throat, which the singing attitude exhibited in a favourable light, but who possessed about as much talent for music, or indeed for anything, as the favourite Persian cat of the most noble. Signor da Capo was very good-looking, and was one of those who, at a respectable distance, and in a modified sense, "understood" the Marchioness, and she responded to his gushing communications about Miss Lambert's talents and attractions, and the inevitable _furore_ which she was indubitably to create, by a vehemently-expressed desire to befriend that young lady, and an amiable determination to bring her out at Carabas House, and so at once serve Miss Lambert, and prevent Lady Lowndes, who was her intimate enemy, and a rival patroness of genius, art, literature, and fashionable religion, from "getting hold of" the promising young _débutante_. The pleasure of the honest signor--who was truly interested in his young friend, and who religiously believed every word he had said in her favour--when Lady Carabas announced her intention of making Miss Lambert's acquaintance, was genuine and demonstrative, and he readily gave the pledge which she exacted from him, that he would not let Lady Lowndes know of the existence of this unsunned treasure. "I cannot answer for the discretion of M--, my lady," said the signor; "he knows Miss Lambert's genius as well as I do, and he goes to Lady Lowndes' oftener than I do; but there is always the chance for us that M-- never thinks and seldom talks of anybody but himself." The acquaintance made under such favourable auspices ripened rapidly into intimacy, very flattering, and likely to prove very profitable, to Miss Lambert. The Marchioness was almost as much delighted with the girl as she professed to be; and Miss Lambert, who "understood" the _grande dame_ in quite a different sense from that in which she was in the habit of using the word, was quite alive to the profit and the pleasure to be derived from such exalted patronage. The calmness, the reserve, the unbending self-respect of the girl had a powerful effect on Lady Carabas. They excited her curiosity, and awakened her interest. She had a good deal of the former in her disposition, apropos of everything, and particularly apropos of the love affairs of her friends and acquaintances, and she naturally felt strong curiosity on this subject as regarded Grace Lambert. She arrived, as she thought, at a tolerably accurate knowledge of who Miss Lambert saw, and where Miss Lambert went; but she never came upon the traces of the slightest "tendre."