unhappy about her son for a few years after his first entrance on a life in London, but latterly she had begun to be a little uneasy.  Tidings of the great amount of his debts reached even her ears; and, moreover, it was nearly time that he should reform and settle down.  During the last twelve months she had remarked fully twelve times, to Griffiths, that she wondered when Kilcullen would marry?—­and she had even twice asked her husband, whether he didn’t think that such a circumstance would be advantageous.  She was therefore much rejoiced to hear that her son was coming to live at home.  But then, why was it so sudden?  It was quite proper that the house should be made a little gay for his reception; that he shouldn’t be expected to spend his evenings with no other society than that of his father and mother, his sister and his cousin; but how was she to get the house ready for the people, and the people ready for the house, at so very short a notice?—­What trouble, also, it would be to her!—­Neither she nor Griffiths would know another moment’s rest; besides—­and the thought nearly drove her into hysterics,—­where was she to get a new cook?

However, she promised her husband to do her best.  She received from him a list of people to be invited, and, merely stipulating that she shouldn’t be required to ask any one except the parson of the parish under a week, undertook to make the place as bearable as possible to so fastidious and distinguished a person as her own son.

Her first confidante was, of course, Griffiths; and, with her assistance, the wool and the worsted, and the knitting-needles, the unfinished vallances and interminable yards of fringe, were put up and rolled out of the way; and it was then agreed that a council should be held, to which her ladyship proposed to invite Lady Selina and Fanny.  Griffiths, however, advanced an opinion that the latter was at present too lack-a-daisical to be of any use in such a matter, and strengthened her argument by asserting that Miss Wyndham had of late been quite mumchance [44].  Lady Cashel was at first rather inclined to insist on her niece being called to the council, but Griffiths’s eloquence was too strong, and her judgment too undoubted; so Fanny was left undisturbed, and Lady Selina alone summoned to join the aged female senators of Grey Abbey.

     [FOOTNOTE 44:  mumchance—­silent and idle]

“Selina,” said her ladyship, as soon as her daughter was seated on the sofa opposite to her mother’s easy chair, while Griffiths, having shut the door, had, according to custom, sat herself down on her own soft-bottomed chair, on the further side of the little table that always stood at the countess’s right hand.  “Selina, what do you think your father tells me?”

Lady Selina couldn’t think, and declined guessing; for, as she remarked, guessing was a loss of time, and she never guessed right.

“Adolphus is coming home on Tuesday.”