Then he told Miss Falconer that Charlotte should be placed in the "book of Beauty" next season, and that a friend of his had promised to write a little sketch of her. Aunt Letitia said she was _glad_ to be able to assure Lord Maythorne that the Falconers were an ancient race, and had been landed gentry for generations. "Poor dear old lady," Gratian continued, "the only note of lament was, 'What will Mrs. Hannah More say?' She took such a deep interest in dear Charlotte and, perhaps, I may wish, as _she_ will, that Lord Maythorne was more strictly a religious man. But we cannot hope for everything, and dear Charlotte's training has been so careful, that I am not anxious on that score." "Poor dear old auntie!" Melville exclaimed, when, after listening to his wife's rapid chatter, he succeeded in getting in a word. "She'll soon find cause to be anxious when Maythorne comes to her for a bit of thin paper with a good round sum in the corner." Joyce could not speak so lightly of this as Gratian did. She almost reproached herself for not being more honest with Charlotte in days long past, rousing her from dreams of fancied bliss to the great "realities" of life. As she clasped her Baby Joy in her arms that night, she murmured over her tender words, and prayed that she might lead her three little daughters in the right way, and teach them that the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised, and that anchored to those words, they might escape the rocks and quicksands in which so many like poor Charlotte had foundered. For the present, indeed, Charlotte was satisfied. Lord Maythorne bought her, or rather procured for her, many of the fine things she had often longed for. He felt a certain pride in her graceful manners, and perhaps, a little grateful affection for her intense admiration of himself--that romantic admiration which had not yet had time to grow faint! He bought her the last complete edition of Lord Byron's poetry, and Charlotte bathed in that not very wholesome stream, and produced some imitative stanzas, which were printed in the _Bath Chronicle_, with a little paragraph by the editor, that they were from the pen of "a charming lady of title." A copy of the paper, delivered in the Close at Wells, went the round of the little community, and, fluttered with delight, Miss Falconer told admiring friends that dear Charlotte's husband was a man of cultivated taste and encouraged her muse.