"The countess and the paragon—I mean Lady Lenore Beauchamp. I shall have to be careful, or I shall be calling her the paragon to her face. What would she do, uncle?"
"Smile and pass it by with a gracious air," he said, laughing. "You are a clever and a bold girl, Stella, but even you could not take 'a rise,' as we used to say in my school-days, out of Lady Lenore."
"I am not clever, and I am trembling like a mouse," said Stella, with a piteous little pout. "You'll stand by me, uncle, won't you?"
He laughed.
"I think you are quite able to defend yourself, my dear," he said. "Never knew one of your sex who was not."
The fly rumbled over the bridge and entered the long avenue, and Stella, looking out, saw the lights of the house shining at the end of the vista.
"What a grand place it is," she murmured, almost to herself. "Uncle, I feel as if I were about to enter another world; and I am, I think. I have never seen a countess in my life before; have been shut up within the four walls of a school. If she says one word to me I shall expire."
He laughed, and began to feel for the sketch which he had brought with him.
"You will not find her so very terrible," he said.
The fly got to the end of the avenue at last, and wound round the broad drive to the front entrance.