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It must be remembered that she knew nothing of the relation of the nurse to the child she had stolen, knew of no source whence light could fall upon their disappearance.  Old Simon himself knew nothing of the affair till years after the feeble search for the child had ceased.  Lady Ann had a strong hope that his birth had not been registered:  she had searched for it—­with what object I will not speculate, but had not found it.  She was capable of a good deal in some directions, for she came of as low a breed as her husband, with more cunning, and less open defiance in it; there was not much she would have blenched at, with society on her side, and a good chance of foiling in safety the low-born woman who had “popped” her child “in between the” heritage “and” her “hopes.”  It might be wrong, but it would be for the sake of right!  Ought not imposture to be frustrated, however legalized?  Would it not be both intrusion and imposture for a man of low origin to possess the ancient lands of Mortgrange, ousting a child of her family, born of her person, and bred in the brightest beams of the sun social?

I can well imagine her coming to reason thus.  For the present, unnecessary as she was determined to think it, she yet resolved to do all that was left her to do:  she would watch; and while she watched, would take care that the young man was subjected to no annoyance, lest in his wrath his countenance should suggest to another, as to herself, the question of his origin!

Thus it came that Richard heard nothing more of his threatened expulsion from Mortgrange.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

BARBARA’S DUTY.

The same afternoon appeared Barbara—­as none knew when she might not appear—­before the front windows of the house, perched upon her huge yet gracious Miss Brown.  Arthur was in general upon the outlook for her, but to-day he was not, being more vexed with her than usual for withholding the encouragement he desired, and indeed imagined he deserved—­not exactly from vanity, yet no less from an overweening sense of his own worth.

It is an odd delusion to which young men are subject, that, because they admire, perhaps even love a woman, they have a claim on her love.  Arthur was confident that he loved Barbara as never man had loved, as never woman had desired to be loved, and counted it not merely unjust but cruel of her to show him no kindness that savoured of like attraction.  He did not know or suspect that a fortnight of the London season would go far to make him forget her.  He was not a bad sort of fellow, had no vice, was neither snob nor cad; his worst fault was pride in himself because of his family—­pride in everything he had been born to, and in a good deal he fancied he had been born to, in which his having was small enough.  He was not jealous of Barbara’s pleasure in Richard’s company.  The slightest probe of such a feeling toward a man so infinitely beneath