Back to England finally, and the castle was filled with guests.
"I believe," said the duchess to the duke, "that the best thing for our daughter would be a happy marriage. She is over twenty-two. If we could rouse her up to take any interest in any one—all she lacks is animation. She is a Psyche before the coming of Cupid. I heard a gentleman in Italy calling her 'the marble Psyche,' speaking to a friend."
"I cannot understand it," said the duke. "During her first year in society she seemed animated and interested. I believe I even once spoke sharply to her for dancing twice with Captain Rodney Alnwick."
"You were quite right," said the duchess. "I spoke to her myself about him. He was entirely ineligible in every particular. But that all passed by. I thought she liked him a little, and I was glad when he exchanged his regiment and went off to India. A ne'er-do-well family, if an old one."
"We must bring together the best partis," said the duke, "and she may fancy some one. I long to see her settled, and to have grandchildren about me."
The guests came; and among them, calm, gracious, lovely, went Lady Estelle, untouched by adoration, a goddess moving in a nimbus of her own impregnable repose.
There was a dinner-party given for the Bishop of Lansdown, and, as usual, the bishop was full of stories, and told them well.
"I remember," said Lady Estelle, "before we went abroad, you told me some story that interested me—something about a child——"
"No doubt—about the child left at Mark Brace's door."
"Perhaps that might be it. I suppose it has been claimed."