“She merely said she was going to establish them here. I suppose, Val, we have no legal right to this house?”
“Absolutely none. The person who could claim this place for her lifetime is poor grannie, but Lady Wentworth can easily afford to dismiss her from all connection in the matter. Were it not for you, Grace dear, and for all the thousand and one associations that are the very essence of our home here, I should feel almost glad to think that Lady Wentworth’s mother and sister should take our place. They are not of the same world as she. I have always felt a little pang when I have remembered poor Mrs. Pennington. She had a face that would go straight to your heart, Grace, and the sister is——” Val paused, as though he could not find the right word to apply to Polly, as, indeed, he could not.
“The sister, then, is quite different to Lady Wentworth?” Grace said, half listlessly.
She was beginning to feel the reaction of the mental excitement through which she had passed, and Val’s hesitation did not convey anything to her.
She rose as she spoke, and Valentine rose, too.
“Oh! yes; the sister is quite different,” he said, hastily, and with that the subject of Polly dropped.
CHAPTER VIII.
WINNING A HUSBAND.
Polly made her way home after her interview with the lawyer, feeling a little less depressed than she had done for some time.
Firstly, this interview had been more satisfactory than she had anticipated, and the report she had to carry to her mother would be cheering in a sense, and then, for some peculiar reason or other, it had pleased her to meet Mr. Ambleton.
Though she had abused him so much and had felt so much anger toward him, later events had occurred that justified Val’s conduct to a very great extent in her eyes.