Alicia replied demurely that that question had perhaps better be addressed to Lady Lucy. "What's the matter? Can't the young people make up their minds? Do they want Lucy to make them up for them?" Alicia looked at her companion a little under her brows, and did not reply. Lady Niton was so piqued by the girl's expression that she immediately threw herself on the mystery she divined--tearing and scratching at it, like a dog in a rabbit-hole. And very soon she had dragged it to the light. Miss Drake merely remarked that it was very sad, but it appeared that Miss Mallory was not really a Mallory at all, but the daughter of a certain Mrs. Sparling--Juliet Sparling, who--" "Juliet Sparling!" cried Lady Niton, her queer small eyes starting in their sockets. "My dear, you must be mad!" Alicia smiled, though gravely. She was afraid Lady Niton would find that what she said was true. A cross-examination followed, after which Lady Niton sat speechless for a while. She took a fan out of her large reticule and fanned herself, a proceeding by which she often protested against the temperature at which Lady Lucy kept her drawing-room. She then asked for a window to be opened, and when she had been sufficiently oxygenated she delivered herself: "Well, and why not? We really didn't have the picking and choosing of our mothers or fathers, though Lucy always behaves as though we had--to the fourth generation. Besides, I always took the side of that poor creature, and Lucy believed the worst--as usual. Well, and so she's going to make Oliver back out of it?" At this point the door opened, and Lady Lucy glided in, clad in a frail majesty which would have overawed any one but Elizabeth Niton. Alicia discreetly disappeared, and Lady Niton, after an inquiry as to her friend's health--delivered, as it were, at the point of the bayonet, and followed by a flying remark on the absurdity of treating your body as if it were only given you to be harried--plunged headlong into the great topic. What an amazing business! Now at last one would see what Oliver was made of! Lady Lucy summoned all her dignity, expounded her view, and entirely declined to be laughed or rated out of it. For Elizabeth Niton, her wig much awry, her old eyes and cheeks blazing, took up the cause of Diana with alternate sarcasm and eloquence. As for the social disrepute--stuff! All that was wanting to such a beautiful creature as Diana Mallory was a story and a scandal. Positively she would be the rage, and Oliver's fortune was made. Lady Lucy sat in pale endurance, throwing in an occasional protest, not budging by one inch--and no doubt reminding herself from time to time, in the intervals of her old friend's attacks, of the letter she had just despatched to Beechcote--until, at last, Lady Niton, having worked herself up into a fine frenzy to no purpose at all, thought it was time to depart.