The difficulty in her way was pecuniary.  The admiral was poor.  He had not quite six thousand a year, and though he practiced the utmost economy in order to keep up the most expensive habits, he could not afford to give his daughter a dowry.  Now the well born bachelors of her set, having more blue bood, but much less wealth, than they needed, admired her, paid her compliments, danced with her, but could not afford to marry her.  Some of them even told her so, married rich daughters of tea merchants, iron founders, or successful stocktrokers, and then tried to make matches between her and their lowly born brothers-in-law.

So, when Gertrude met Lady Brandon, her lot was secretly wretched, and she was glad to accept an invitation to Brandon Beeches in order to escape for a while from the admiral’s daily sarcasms on the marriage list in the “Times.”  The invitation was the more acceptable because Sir Charles was no mushroom noble, and, in the schooldays which Gertrude now remembered as the happiest of her life, she had acknowledged that Jane’s family and connections were more aristocratic than those of any other student then at Alton, herself excepted.  To Agatha, whose grandfather had amassed wealth as a proprietor of gasworks (novelties in his time), she had never offered her intimacy.  Agatha had taken it by force, partly moral, partly physical.  But the gasworks were never forgotten, and when Lady Brandon mentioned, as a piece of delightful news, that she had found out their old school companion, and had asked her to join them, Gertrude was not quite pleased.  Yet, when they met, her eyes were the only wet ones there, for she was the least happy of the three, and, though she did not know it, her spirit was somewhat broken.  Agatha, she thought, had lost the bloom of girlhood, but was bolder, stronger, and cleverer than before.  Agatha had, in fact, summoned all her self-possession to hide her shyness.  She detected the emotion of Gertrude, who at the last moment did not try to conceal it.  It would have been poured out freely in words, had Gertrude’s social training taught her to express her feelings as well as it had accustomed her to dissemble them.

“Do you remember Miss Wilson?” said Jane, as the three drove from the railway station to Brandon Beeches.  “Do you remember Mrs. Miller and her cat?  Do you remember the Recording Angel?  Do you remember how I fell into the canal?”

These reminiscences lasted until they reached the house and went together to Agatha’s room.  Here Jane, having some orders to give in the household, had to leave them—­reluctantly; for she was jealous lest Gertrude should get the start of her in the renewal of Agatha’s affection.  She even tried to take her rival away with her; but in vain.  Gertrude would not budge.

“What a beautiful house and splendid place!” said Agatha when Jane was gone.  “And what a nice fellow Sir Charles is!  We used to laugh at Jane, but she can afford to laugh at the luckiest of us now.  I always said she would blunder into the best of everything.  Is it true that she married in her first season?”