Court Netherleigh. Mrs. Henry Wood

learnt to appreciate Mr. Grubb as he deserved; she liked and esteemed him, and would gladly have married him.

      "Will Adela accept him?" were the first words she said. For she did not forget that Adela, by way of amusing herself, had not been sparing of her ridicule, the previous night, of Mr. Grubb and his pretensions.

      "I don't know," growled Lady Acorn. "Adela, when she chooses, can be the very essence of obstinacy. I have said nothing to her. It is only now that I found out there was a misapprehension."

      "Mother!" suddenly exclaimed Grace, "it has placed me in a painfully ridiculous position, there's no denying that: we have been talking of it among ourselves. If you will help me, it may be made less so."

      "How?"

      "Say that I was in your confidence; that we both know it was Adela; and that what was said about me was arranged between us to break the matter to her, and get her reconciled to the idea of him. And let it be myself, not you, to explain now to Adela."

      "Yes, yes; do as you will," eagerly assented the mother: for she did feel sorry for Grace.

      Grace went to Adela's room, and found her there, with Harriet. She had been recalling the past: and she saw now how attentive Francis Grubb had been to Adela; how fond of talking with her. "Had our eyes been open, we might have seen it all!" sighed Grace.

      "How nicely you were all taken in last night!" she said, assuming a light playfulness, as she sat down at the open window. "Don't you think mamma and I got up that fable well about Mr. Grubb?"

      "Got it up!" cried Harriet. "You hypocritical sinners! Did he not make the offer?"

      "Ay; but not to me. It was better to put it so, don't you see, by way of breaking it to you."

      "Then you are not going to be Lady Grace Grubb, after all!" said Adela. "Well, it would have been an incongruous assimilation of names."

      "I am not. Guess who it is he wants, Adela?"

      "Frances?" cried Harriet.

      "No, but you are very near—you burn, as we children used to say at our play."

      "Not Adela!"

      "It is," answered Grace. "And I congratulate her heartily. Lady Adela Grubb will sound better than Lady Grace would."

      "Thank you," satirically answered Adela; "you may retain the name yourself, Grace. None of your Grubbs for me."

      "Ah, don't be silly, child. A grub, indeed! He is one of the best and most admirable of men; a true nobleman."

      The words were interrupted by a laugh from Harriet; a ringing laugh. "Oh, Gracie, how unfortunate! What shall we do! Frances wrote last night to tell Miss Upton of your engagement, and the letter's posted."

      Grace Chenevix suppressed her mortification, and quitted her sisters with a smiling face. But when she was safe in her own room, she burst into a flood of distressing tears.

      Lord and Lady Acorn chose to breakfast that morning alone in the library. Afterwards Adela was sent for. Straightening down the slim waist of her pretty morning dress with an action that spoke of conscious vanity, she obeyed the summons. Lord Acorn threw aside the morning paper when she entered.

      "Adela, sit down," he said, pushing the chair at his elbow slightly forward. "We have received an offer of marriage for you; and though it is not in every respect all that we could wish——"

      "From the grub," interrupted Adela, merging ceremony in indignation, as she stood confronting both her parents, regardless of the seat proffered. "Grace has been telling me."

      "Hush, Adela! don't give way to flippant folly," interposed her mother. "Have you considered the advantages of such an alliance as this?"

      "Advantages, mamma! I don't understand. Have you"—turning to her father—"considered the disadvantages, sir?"

      "There is only one disadvantage connected with it, Adela—that he is not of noble birth."

      "But that is insuperable, papa!"

      "Indeed, no," said Lord Acorn. "You will possess every good that wealth can command; all things that can conduce to happiness. Your position will be an enviable one. How many of the daughters of our order—in more favourable circumstances than yours—have married these merchant-princes!"

      Adela pouted. "That is no reason why I should do so, papa. I don't want to marry."

      "You might all remain unmarried for ever, and make five old maids of yourselves, and buy cats and monkeys to pet, if it were not for the horrible dilemma we are in," screamed the countess, in her well-known fiery tones, and with a wrathful glance at the earl; for her tones always were fiery and her glances wrathful when his unpardonable recklessness was recalled to her mind. "Mr. Grubb has been, so to say, the salvation of us for years—for years, Adela—every year has brought its embarrassments, and he has helped us out of them. As well tell her the truth at once, Lord Acorn," she concluded sharply.

      "Ugh!" grunted he, in what might be taken for a note of unwilling assent.

      "And if we put this affront upon him—refuse him your hand, which he solicits with so much honour and liberality—it will be all over with us. We can't live any longer in England, for there's nothing left to live upon; we must go abroad to some wretched hole of a continental place, and lodge on one dirty floor of six rooms, and live as common people. What chance would there be of your picking up even a merchant then?"

      Adela rose, smiling incredulously. "Things cannot be as bad as that, mamma."

      "Sit down, Adela," cried her father, peremptorily, raising his hand to check the flow of eloquence his wife was again about to enter upon. "It is as bad. Grubb has behaved like a prince to me, and nothing less. And, if he should recall the money he has lent, I know not, in truth, where any of us would be. I should have to run; and be posted up as a defaulter, into the bargain, all over the kingdom." And, in a few brief words, he explained facts to her; making, of course, the worst of them. The obstinacy on Adela's countenance faded away as she listened: she was deeply attached to her father.

      "You will be a very princess, if you take him, Adela," said Lady Acorn. "Ah! I can tell you, child, before you have come to my age you will have found out that there's little worth living for but wealth, which brings ease and comfort. I ought to know; for our want of it, through one absurd extravagance or another"—with a dreadful glance at her lord—"has been the worry and bane of my married life."

      "You have been extravagant on your own score," growled he.

      "But, papa, I don't care for Mr. Grubb. Apart from the disreputable fact that he is a tradesman——"

      "Those merchant-princes cannot be called tradesmen, Adela," quickly interposed Lord Acorn, who could put the case strongly, in spite of his prejudices, when it suited his interest to do so.

      "Well, apart from that, I say I do not like him."

      "You cannot dislike him. No one can dislike Francis Grubb."

      "I shall if I am made to marry him."

      Her obstinate mood was returning; they saw that, and they let her escape for a time. Adela, the youngest and most beautiful of all their children, had been reprehensibly indulged: allowed to grow up in the belief that the world was made for her.

      "Well, Adela, and how have you sped?" asked Grace.

      "Oh, I don't know," was Adela's answer, as she flung herself into a low chair by her dressing-table. "Mamma is so fond of telling us that the world's full of trouble; and I think it is."

      "Have you consented?"

      "No. And I don't intend to consent."

      "But why not? He is very nice; very; and the advantages are very great. Tell me why you will not, Adela—dear Adela?"

      Adela turned her head away. "I do not care to marry yet; him, or any other man."

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