“Oh, dear me, yes,” cried Lady Garvington, starting.  “I remember.  He wrote yesterday from London, asking if he might come.  I told him yes, although I mentioned that we had hardly anyone with us just now.”

Miss Greeby looked greatly annoyed, as Mrs. Belgrove maliciously saw, for she knew well that the heiress would now regret having so hastily intimated her approaching departure.  What was the expression on Lady Agnes’s face, the old lady could not see, for the millionaire’s wife shielded it—­presumably from the fire—­with a large fan of white feathers.  Had Mrs. Belgrove been able to read that countenance she would have seen satisfaction written thereon, and would probably have set down the expression to a wrong cause.  In reality, Agnes was glad to think that Lambert’s promise was being kept, and that he no longer intended to avoid her company so openly.

But if she was pleased, Miss Greeby was not, and still continued to look annoyed, since she had burnt her boats by announcing her departure.  And what annoyed her still more than her hasty decision was, that she would leave Lambert in the house along with the rival she most dreaded.  Though what the young man could see in this pale, washed-out creature Miss Greeby could not imagine.  She glanced at a near mirror and saw her own opulent, full-blown looks clothed in a pale-blue dinner-gown, which went so well—­as she inartistically decided, with her ruddy locks, Mrs. Belgrove considered that Miss Greeby looked like a paint-box, or a sunset, or one of Turner’s most vivid pictures, but the heiress was very well pleased with herself.  Lady Agnes, in her favorite white, with her pale face and serious looks, was but a dull person of the nun persuasion.  And Miss Greeby did not think that Lambert cared for nuns, when he had an Amazonian intelligent pal—­so she put it—­at hand.  But, of course, he might prefer dark beauties like Chaldea.  Poor Miss Greeby; she was pursuing her wooing under very great difficulties, and became silent in order to think out some way of revoking in some natural manner the information of her departure.

There were other women in the room, who joined in the conversation, and all were glad to hear that Mr. Lambert intended to pay a visit to his cousin, for, indeed, the young man was a general favorite.  And then as two or three decided—­Mrs. Belgrove amongst the number—­there really could be nothing in the report that he loved Lady Agnes still, else he would scarcely come and stay where she was.  As for Pine’s wife, she was a washed-out creature, who had never really loved her cousin as people had thought.  And after all, why should she, since he was so poor, especially when she was married to a millionaire with the looks of an Eastern prince, and manners of quite an original nature, although these were not quite conventional.  Oh, yes, there was nothing in the scandal that said Garvington had sold his sister to bolster up the family property.  Lady Agnes was quite happy, and her husband was a dear man, who left her a great deal to her own devices—­which he wouldn’t have done had he suspected the cousin; and who gave her pots of money to spend.  And what more could a sensible woman want?