Court Netherleigh. Mrs. Henry Wood

be expected to understand distinctions which were above him.

      Lady Acorn rose from table early. She had been making up her mind to the match, during dinner: like her husband, she discovered, on reflection, its numerous advantages, and she was impatient to disclose the matter to Grace. Mr. Grubb held the door open as they filed out, for which the countess thanked him by a bow more cordial than she had ever bestowed on him in her life. Whether it had ever occurred to Lady Acorn that this City man was probably the son of Catherine Grant, cannot be told. She had never alluded to it. Catherine had offended them all too greatly to be recalled even by name: and, so far as Lord Acorn went, he did not know such a person as Catherine had ever existed.

      The girls gathered their chairs round the fire in the autumn evening, and began grumbling. "Engagements"—he did not say of what nature—had been Lord Acorn's plea for remaining in town when every one else had left it. Adela was especially bitter.

      "Papa never does things like other people. When we ought to be away, we are boxed up in town; and when every one else is in town, we are kept in the country. I'm sick of it."

      "It's a pity, girls, you haven't husbands to cater for you, as you are sick of your father's rule," tartly spoke their mother. "You don't go off; any of you."

      "It is Grace's turn to go first," cried Lady Harriet.

      "Yes, it is—and one wedding in a family often leads to another," observed the wily countess. "I should like to see Grace well settled. With a fine place of her own, where we could go and visit her, and a nice town mansion; and a splendid income to support it all."

      "And a box at the opera," suggested Frances.

      "And a herd of deer, and a pack of hounds, and the crown diamonds," interrupted Adela, with irony in her tone, and a spice of scorn in her eye, as she glanced up from her book. "Don't you wish we had Aladdin's lamp? It might come to pass then."

      "But if I tell you that it will come to pass without it," said Lady Acorn, "that it has come to pass, what should you say? Look up, Grace, my dear; there's luck in store for you yet."

      Their mother's manner was so pointedly significant, that all were silent from amazement. The colour mounted to the cheeks of Grace, and her lips parted: could it be that she was no longer to remain Lady Grace Chenevix?

      "Grace, child," continued the countess, "the time has gone by for you to pick and choose. You are now getting on for thirty, and have never had the ghost of a chance——"

      "That is more than you ought to say, mamma," interrupted Grace, her face flushing, perhaps at her mother's assertion telling home. "I may have had—I did have a chance, as you call it, but——"

      "Well, not that we ever knew of; let us amend the sentence in that way. What I was going to observe is, that you must not be over-particular now."

      "Has Grace got an offer?" inquired Harriet, breathlessly.

      "Yes, she has, and you need not all look so incredulous. It is a good offer too, plenty of substance about it. She will abound in such wealth that she'll be the envy of all the girls in London, and of you four in particular. She will have her town and country mansions, crowds of servants, dresses at will—everything, in short, that money can purchase." For, in her maternal anxiety for the acceptance of the offer, her ladyship thought she could not make too much of its advantages.

      "Why, for all that, Grace would marry a chimney-sweep," laughed the plain-speaking Lady Frances.

      "Grace has had it in her head to turn serious," added Harriet; "she may put that off now. I think Aladdin's lamp has been at work."

      "Of course there are some disadvantages attending the proposed match," said Lady Acorn, with deprecation; "no marriage is without them, I can tell you that. Grace will have every real and substantial good; but the gentleman, in birth and position, is—rather obscure. But he is not a chimney-sweep: it's not so bad as that."

      "Good Heavens, mamma!" interrupted Lady Grace. "'So bad as that'?"

      "Pray do not make any further mystery, mamma," said Mary. "Who is it that has fallen in love with Grace?"

      "Mr. Grubb."

      "Mr.——Grubb!" was echoed by the young ladies in every variety of astonishment, and Grace thought that of all the men in the world she should have guessed him last; but she did not say so. She was of a cautious nature, and rarely spoke on impulse.

      The silence of surprise was broken by a ringing laugh from Adela, one laugh following upon another. It seemed as though she could not cease. When had they seen Adela so merry?

      "I cannot help it," she said apologetically, "but it did strike me as sounding so absurd. 'Lady Grace Grubb!' Forgive me, Gracie."

      "It will not bear so aristocratic a sound as Lady Grace Chenevix," retorted the mother, tartly, "but remember the old saying, 'What's in a name?' It is you who are absurd, Adela."

       CHAPTER V.

      LADY ADELA.

      "I have opened the matter to Grace, and there'll be no trouble with her," began Lady Acorn to her husband the next morning, halting to say it as she was going into her dressing-room. "No girl knows better than she on which side her bread is buttered!"

      "To Grace!" cried the earl, who was only half awake, and spoke from the bedclothes. "Do you mean about Grubb?"

      "Now what else should I mean?"

      "But it is not Grace he wants. It's Adela."

      "Adela!" echoed Lady Acorn, aghast.

      "I don't think he'd have Grace at a gift—or any of them but Adela. And so you told her, making her dream of wedding-rings and orange-blossoms! Poor Gracie, what a sell!"

      "Adela will never have him," broke forth the countess, in high vexation, at herself, her husband, Mr. Grubb, and the world in general. "Never!"

      "Oh, nonsense, she must be talked into it. With five girls, it's something to get off one of them."

      "Adela is not a girl to be 'talked into' anything. She would like a duke. She is the vainest of them all."

      "Look at the amount of devilry this will patch up," urged the earl, impressively, as he lifted his head from the pillow. "If he does not get Adela, he is going to sue for his overdue bonds."

      "You have no business with bonds, overdue or under-due," snapped his wife. "I declare I have nothing but worry in this life."

      "I shall get the two thousand pounds from him, if this comes off; you shall have five hundred of it, as I told you; and my debt to him he will cancel. The man's mad after Adela."

      "But she's not mad after him," retorted Lady Acorn.

      "Make her so," advised the earl. And her ladyship went forth to her dressing-room, and allowed some of her superfluous temper to explode on her unoffending maid, who stood there waiting for her.

      "There, that will do," she impatiently said, when only half dressed, "I'll finish for myself. Go and send Lady Grace to me." And the maid went, gladly enough.

      "Gracie, my dear," she began, when her daughter entered, "I am so sorry; so vexed; but it was your papa's fault. He should have been more explicit."

      "Vexed at what?" asked Grace.

      "That which I told you last night—I am so grieved, poor child! It turns out to have been some horrible mistake."

      Grace compressed her lips. "Yes, mamma?"

      "A mistake in the name. It is Adela Mr. Grubb proposed for—not you. I am deeply grieved, Grace."

      Lady Grace laid one hand across her chest: it may be that her heart was beating unpleasantly with the disappointment. Better, certainly, that her hopes had never been raised, than that they should be dashed thus