'Certainly—or he would fly off like a sky-rocket at the first symptom of the princess.'

'Then I think we need not alter our plans. All that Mary's father tells me is, that he does not intend to return home as yet, though his successor is appointed, since he is much occupied by this new partnership with Oliver, and expects that the investment will be successful. He quite approves of our living at the Terrace, especially as he thinks I ought to be informed that Oliver has declared his intentions with regard to his nephew, and so if anything should arise between the young people, I am not to discourage it.'

'Mary is in request,' said Mrs. Frost, slyly, and as she met Mrs. Ponsonby's eyes full of uneasy inquiry. 'You don't mean that you have not observed at least his elder lordship's most decided courtship? Don't be too innocent, my dear.'

'Pray don't say so, Aunt Kitty, or you will make me uncomfortable in staying here. If the like ever crossed his mind, he must perceive that the two are just what we were together ourselves.'

'That might make him wish it the more,' Aunt Catharine had almost said, but she restrained it halfway, and said, 'Louis is hardly come to the time of life for a grande passion.'

'True. He is wonderfully young, and Mary not only seems much older, but is by no means the girl to attract a mere youth. I rather suspect she will have no courtship but from the elders.'

'In spite of her opportunities. What would some mammas—Lord Ormersfield's bugbear, for instance, Lady Conway—give for such a chance! Three months of a lame young Lord, and such a lame young Lord as my Louis!'

'I might have feared,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, 'if Mary were not so perfectly simple. Aunt Melicent managed to abstract all romance, and I never regretted it so little. She has looked after him merely because it came in her way as a form of kindness, and is too much his governess for anything of the other sort.'

'So you really do not wish for the other sort?' said Mrs. Frost, half mortified, as if it were a slight to her boy.

'I don't know how her father might take it,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, eager to disarm, her. 'With his grand expectations, and his view of the state of this property, he might make difficulties. He is fond of expressing his contempt for needy nobility, and I am afraid, after all that has passed, that this would be the last case in which he would make an exception.'