"My father has claims, which will never vex her, whether paid or not paid; but it is right that he should know the truth. I do not believe that the Countess herself knows, though she has been led to think that the claim has been surrendered."

Mr. Goffe was very sorry, but really he had nothing further to tell.

CHAPTER XIII.

NEW FRIENDS.

The introduction to Yoxham followed quickly upon the Earl's visit to Wyndham Street. There was a great consultation at the rectory before a decision could be made as to the manner in which the invitation should be given. The Earl thought that it should be sent to the mother. The rector combated this view very strongly, still hoping that though he might be driven to call the girl Lady Anna, he might postpone the necessity of acknowledging the countess-ship of the mother till the marriage should have been definitely acknowledged.

Mrs. Lovel thought that if the girl were Lady Anna, then the mother must be the Countess Lovel, and that it would be as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb. But the wisdom of Aunt Julia sided with her brother, though she did not share her brother's feelings of animosity to the two women. "It is understood that the girl is to be invited, and not the mother," said Miss Lovel; "and as it is quite possible that the thing should fail,--in which case the lawsuit might possibly go on,--the less we acknowledge the better." The Earl declared that the lawsuit couldn't go on,--that he would not carry it on. "My dear Frederic, you are not the only person concerned. The lady in Italy, who still calls herself Countess Lovel, may renew the suit on her own behalf as soon as you have abandoned it. Should she succeed, you would have to make what best compromise you could with her respecting the property. That is the way I understand it." This exposition of the case by Miss Lovel was so clear that it carried the day, and accordingly a letter was written by Mrs. Lovel, addressed to Lady Anna Lovel, asking her to come and spend a few days at Yoxham. She could bring her maid with her or not as she liked; but she could have the service of Mrs. Lovel's lady's maid if she chose to come unattended. The letter sounded cold when it was read, but the writer signed herself, "Yours affectionately, Jane Lovel." It was addressed to "The Lady Anna Lovel, to the care of Messrs. Goffe and Goffe, solicitors, Raymond's Buildings, Gray's Inn."

Lady Anna was allowed to read it first; but she read it in the presence of her mother, to whom she handed it at once, as a matter of course. A black frown came across the Countess's brow, and a look of displeasure, almost of anger, rested on her countenance. "Is it wrong, mamma?" asked the girl.

"It is a part of the whole;--but, my dear, it shall not signify.

Conquerors cannot be conquerors all at once, nor can the vanquished be expected to submit themselves with a grace. But it will come. And though they should ignore me utterly, that will be as nothing. I have not clung to this for years past to win their loves."

"I will not go, mamma, if they are unkind to you."

"You must go, my dear. It is only that they are weak enough to think that they can acknowledge you, and yet continue to deny to me my rights. But it matters nothing. Of course you shall go,--and you shall go as the daughter of the Countess Lovel."

That mention of the lady's-maid had been unfortunate. Mrs. Lovel had simply desired to make it easy for the young lady to come without a servant to wait upon her, and had treated her husband's far-away cousin as elder ladies often do treat those who are younger when the question of the maid may become a difficulty. But the Countess, who would hardly herself have thought of it, now declared that her girl should go attended as her rank demanded. Lady Anna, therefore, under her mother's dictation, wrote the following reply:--

Wyndham Street, 3rd August, 183--.

DEAR MRS. LOVEL,

I shall be happy to accept your kind invitation to Yoxham, but can hardly do so before the 10th. On that day I will leave London for York inside the mail-coach. Perhaps you can be kind enough to have me met where the coach stops.

As you are so good as to say you can take her in, I will bring my own maid.

Yours affectionately,

ANNA LOVEL.

"But, mamma, I don't want a maid," said the girl, who had never been waited on in her life, and who had more often than not made her mother's bed and her own till they had come up to London.

"Nevertheless you shall take one. You will have to make other changes besides that; and the sooner that you begin to make them the easier they will be to you."

Then at once the Countess made a pilgrimage to Mr. Goffe in search of funds wherewith to equip her girl properly for her new a.s.sociations.

She was to go, as Lady Anna Lovel, to stay with Mrs. Lovel and Miss Lovel and the little Lovels. And she was to go as one who was to be the chosen bride of Earl Lovel. Of course she must be duly caparisoned. Mr. Goffe made difficulties,--as lawyers always do,--but the needful money was at last forthcoming. Representations had been made in high legal quarters,--to the custodians for the moment of the property which was to go to the established heir of the late Earl.

They had been made conjointly by Goffe and Goffe, and Norton and Flick, and the money was forthcoming. Mr. Goffe suggested that a great deal could not be wanted all at once for the young lady's dress. The Countess smiled as she answered, "You hardly know, Mr.

Goffe, the straits to which we have been reduced. If I tell you that this dress which I have on is the only one in which I can fitly appear even in your chambers, perhaps you will think that I demean myself." Mr. Goffe was touched, and signed a sufficient cheque. They were going to succeed, and then everything would be easy. Even if they did not succeed, he could get it pa.s.sed in the accounts. And if not that--well, he had run greater risks than this for clients whose causes were of much less interest than this of the Countess and her daughter.

The Countess had mentioned her own gown, and had spoken strict truth in what she had said of it;--but not a shilling of Mr. Goffe's money went to the establishment of a wardrobe for herself. That her daughter should go down to Yoxham Rectory in a manner befitting the daughter of Earl Lovel was at this moment her chief object. Things were purchased by which the poor girl, unaccustomed to such finery, was astounded and almost stupefied. Two needlewomen were taken in at the lodgings in Wyndham Street; parcels from Swan and Edgar's,--Marshall and Snellgrove were not then, or at least had not loomed to the grandeur of an entire block of houses,--addressed to Lady Anna Lovel, were frequent at the door, somewhat to the disgust of the shopmen, who did not like to send goods to Lady Anna Lovel in Wyndham Street. But ready money was paid, and the parcels came home.

Lady Anna, poor girl, was dismayed much by the parcels, but she was at her wits' end when the lady's-maid came,--a young lady, herself so sweetly attired that Lady Anna would have envied her in the old c.u.mberland days. "I shall not know what to say to her, mamma," said Lady Anna.

"It will all come in two days, if you will only be equal to the occasion," said the Countess, who in providing her child with this expensive adjunct, had made some calculation that the more her daughter was made to feel the luxuries of aristocratic life, the less p.r.o.ne would she be to adapt herself to the roughnesses of Daniel Thwaite the tailor.

The Countess put her daughter into the mail-coach, and gave her much parting advice. "Hold up your head when you are with them. That is all that you have to do. Among them all your blood will be the best."

This theory of blood was one of which Lady Anna had never been able even to realise the meaning. "And remember this too;--that you are in truth the most wealthy. It is they that should honour you. Of course you will be courteous and gentle with them,--it is your nature; but do not for a moment allow yourself to be conscious that you are their inferior." Lady Anna,--who could think but little of her birth,--to whom it had been throughout her life a thing plaguesome rather than profitable,--could remember only what she had been in c.u.mberland, and her binding obligation to the tailor's son. She could remember but that and the unutterable sweetness of the young man who had once appeared before her,--to whom she knew that she must be inferior.

"Hold up your head among them, and claim your own always," said the Countess.

The rectory carriage was waiting for her at the inn yard in York, and in it was Miss Lovel. When the hour had come it was thought better that the wise woman of the family should go than any other. For the ladies of Yoxham were quite as anxious as to the Lady Anna as was she in respect of them. What sort of a girl was this that they were to welcome among them as the Lady Anna,--who had lived all her life with tailors, and with a mother of whom up to quite a late date they had thought all manner of evil? The young lord had reported well of her, saying that she was not only beautiful, but feminine, of soft modest manners, and in all respects like a lady. The Earl, however, was but a young man, likely to be taken by mere beauty; and it might be that the girl had been clever enough to hoodwink him. So much evil had been believed that a report stating that all was good could not be accepted at once as true. Miss Lovel would be sure to find out, even in the s.p.a.ce of an hour's drive, and Miss Lovel went to meet her. She did not leave the carriage, but sent the footman to help Lady Anna Lovel from the coach. "My dear," said Miss Lovel, "I am very glad to see you. Oh, you have brought a maid! We didn't think you would.

There is a seat behind which she can occupy."

"Mamma thought it best. I hope it is not wrong, Mrs. Lovel."

"I ought to have introduced myself. I am Miss Lovel, and the rector of Yoxham is my brother. It does not signify about the maid in the least. We can do very well with her. I suppose she has been with you a long time."

"No, indeed;--she only came the day before yesterday." And so Miss Lovel learned the whole story of the lady's-maid.

Lady Anna said very little, but Miss Lovel explained a good many things during the journey. The young lord was not at Yoxham. He was with a friend in Scotland, but would be home about the 20th. The two boys were at home for the holidays, but would go back to school in a fortnight. Minnie Lovel, the daughter, had a governess. The rectory, for a parsonage, was a tolerably large house, and convenient. It had been Lord Lovel's early home, but at present he was not much there.

"He thinks it right to go to Lovel Grange during a part of the autumn. I suppose you have seen Lovel Grange."

"Never."

"Oh, indeed. But you lived near it;--did you not?"

"No, not near;--about fifteen miles, I think. I was born there, but have never been there since I was a baby."

"Oh!--you were born there. Of course you know that it is Lord Lovel's seat now. I do not know that he likes it, though the scenery is magnificent. But a landlord has to live, at least for some period of the year, upon his property. You saw my nephew."

"Yes; he came to us once."

"I hope you liked him. We think him very nice. But then he is almost the same as a son here. Do you care about visiting the poor?"

"I have never tried," said Lady Anna.

"Oh dear!"

"We have been so poor ourselves;--we were just one of them." Then Miss Lovel perceived that she had made a mistake. But she was generous enough to recognize the unaffected simplicity of the girl, and almost began to think well of her.

"I hope you will come round the parish with us. We shall be very glad. Yoxham is a large parish, with scattered hamlets, and there is plenty to do. The manufactories are creeping up to us, and we have already a large mill at Yoxham Lock. My brother has to keep two curates now. Here we are, my dear, and I hope we shall be able to make you happy."

Mrs. Lovel did not like the maid, and Mr. Lovel did not like it at all. "And yet we heard when we were up in town that they literally had not anything to live on," said the parson. "I hope that, after all, we may not be making fools of ourselves." But there was no help for it, and the maid was of course taken in.

The children had been instructed to call their cousin Lady Anna,--unless they heard their mother drop the t.i.tle, and then they were to drop it also. They were not so young but what they had all heard the indiscreet vigour with which their father had ridiculed the claim to the t.i.tle, and had been something at a loss to know whence the change had come. "Perhaps they are as they call themselves," the rector had said, "and, if so, heaven forbid that we should not give them their due." After this the three young ones, discussing the matter among themselves, had made up their minds that Lady Anna was no cousin of theirs,--but "a humbug." When, however, they saw her their hearts relented, and the girl became soft, and the boys became civil. "Papa," said Minnie Lovel, on the second day, "I hope she is our cousin."

"I hope so too, my dear."

"I think she is. She looks as if she ought to be because she is so pretty."

"Being pretty, my dear, is not enough. You should love people because they are good."

"But I would not like all the good people to be my cousins;--would you, papa? Old widow Grimes is a very good old woman; but I don't want to have her for a cousin."