‘Do you envy them that?’

’Sometimes, papa.  Only I shall think of more of poor mama by being alone, and I should like to be thinking of her always.’  He shook his head mournfully.  ’I do not mean that I shall always be unhappy, as I am now.’

’No, dear; you are too young for that.  It is only the old who suffer in that way.’

’You will suffer less if I am with you; won’t you, papa?  I do not want to go to Lady Cantrip.  I hardly remember her at all.’

‘She is very good.’

’Oh, yes.  That is what they used to say to mamma about Lady Midlothian.  Papa, do not send me to Lady Cantrip.’

Of course it was decided that she should not go to Lady Cantrip at once, or to Mrs Jeffrey Palliser, and, after a short interval of doubt, it was decided also that Mrs Finn should remain at Matching for at least a fortnight.  The Duke declared that he would be glad to see Mr Finn, but she knew in his present mood the society of any one man to whom he would feel himself called upon to devote his time, would be a burden to him, and she plainly said that Mr Finn had better not come to Matching at present.  ’There are old occasions,’ she said, ’which will enable you to bear with me as you will with your butler or your groom, but you are not as yet quite able to make yourself happy with company.’  This he bore with perfect equanimity, and then, as it were, handed over his daughter to Mrs Finn’s care.

Very quickly there came a close intimacy between Mrs Finn and Lady Mary.  For a day or two the elder woman, though the place she filled was one of absolute confidence, rather resisted than encouraged the intimacy.  She always remembered that the girl was the daughter of a great duke, and that her position in the house had sprung from circumstances which would not, perhaps, in the eyes of the world at large, have recommended her for such a friendship.  She knew,—­the reader may possibly know—­that nothing had ever been purer, nothing more disinterested than her friendship.  But she knew also—­no one knew better—­that the judgement of men and women does not always run parallel with facts.  She entertained, too, a conviction with regard to herself, that hard words and hard judgements were to be expected from the world,—­and were to be accepted by her without any strong feeling of injustice,—­because she had been elevated by chance to the possession of more good things than she merited.  She weighed all this with a very fine balance, and even after the encouragement she had received from the Duke, was intent on confining herself to some position about the girl inferior to that which such a friend as Lady Cantrip might have occupied.  But the girl’s manner and the girl’s speech about her own mother, overcame her.  It was the unintentional revelation of the Duchess’s constant reference to her,—­the way in which Lady Mary would assert that ’Mamma used always to say this of you; mamma always knew that you would think so and so; mamma used to say that you had told her’.  It was the feeling thus conveyed, that the mother who was now dead had in her daily dealings with her own child spoke of her as her nearest friend, which mainly served to conquer the deference of manner which she had assumed.