"Papa never does things like other people. When we ought to be away, we are boxed up in town; and when every one else is in town, we are kept in the country. I'm sick of it."
"It's a pity, girls, you haven't husbands to cater for you, as you are sick of your father's rule," tartly spoke their mother. "You don't go off; any of you."
"It is Grace's turn to go first," cried Lady Harriet.
"Yes, it is—and one wedding in a family often leads to another," observed the wily countess. "I should like to see Grace well settled. With a fine place of her own, where we could go and visit her, and a nice town mansion; and a splendid income to support it all."
"And a box at the opera," suggested Frances.
"And a herd of deer, and a pack of hounds, and the crown diamonds," interrupted Adela, with irony in her tone, and a spice of scorn in her eye, as she glanced up from her book. "Don't you wish we had Aladdin's lamp? It might come to pass then."
"But if I tell you that it will come to pass without it," said Lady Acorn, "that it has come to pass, what should you say? Look up, Grace, my dear; there's luck in store for you yet."
Their mother's manner was so pointedly significant, that all were silent from amazement. The colour mounted to the cheeks of Grace, and her lips parted: could it be that she was no longer to remain Lady Grace Chenevix?
"Grace, child," continued the countess, "the time has gone by for you to pick and choose. You are now getting on for thirty, and have never had the ghost of a chance——"
"That is more than you ought to say, mamma," interrupted Grace, her face flushing, perhaps at her mother's assertion telling home. "I may have had—I did have a chance, as you call it, but——"