Thus Lottie escaped for the moment. She was asked a little later to see if Mrs. Despard’s collar was straight, and to pin on her veil. “Do I look nice?” said Polly triumphant, and at the same time mollified by the services which Lottie rendered without objection. She had put on her “blue silk” and the bonnet with the orange-blossoms, and neckties enough to stock a shop. “Perhaps, as there’s nothing ordered, and I mean to make a change with the tradespeople, the Captain and me won’t come back to dinner,” said Polly. “There’s your favourite cold beef, Miss, for Law and you.” Lottie felt that she began to breathe when, rustling and mincing, her strange companion swept out, in the face of all the people who were dispersing from matins, to meet her husband. Polly liked the wondering encounter of all their eyes. With her blue silk sweeping the pavement after her, and her pink parasol, and the orange-blossoms on her bonnet, her figure descending the Dean’s Walk alone, while all the others issued out of the Abbey doors, was conspicuous enough. She was delighted to find that everybody looked at her, and even that some stood still to watch her, looking darkly at her finery. These were the people who were jealous, envious of her fine clothes and her happiness, or jealous of her handsome husband, who met her presently, but who perhaps was not so much delighted to see her amidst all his fellow-Chevaliers as she thought. Captain Despard was not a man of very fine perceptions; but though his blooming young wife was a splendid object indeed beside the dark, little old figure of Mrs. Temple, he had seen enough to feel that the presence of the old lady brought out into larger prominence something which the younger lacked. But he met her with effusive delight, and drew her hand within his arm, and thus they disappeared together. Outside the Precincts there was no need to make any comparison, and Polly’s brilliancy filled all hearts with awe. When Law returned, he found Lottie seated in her little chair, with her face hidden in her hands. It was not that she was crying, as he feared at first. The face she raised to him was crimson with excitement. “Oh, Law!” she said, “Law, Law!” Lottie had got beyond the range of words. After a while she told him all the events of the morning, which did not look half so important when they were told, and they tried to lay their heads together and think what was best to be done. But what could anyone do? Mary could scarcely put the remnants of the cold beef on the table, for her eagerness to tell that she had been to mother, and mother would not hear of her staying. “Places isn’t so hard to get as all that, for a girl with a good character,” she said. When she was gone, Lottie looked piteously at her brother. “What kind of a place could I get?” she said. “What am I fit for? Oh, Law! I think it is a mistake to be brought up a lady. I never thought it before, but I do now. How can we go on living here? and where are we to go?”