Lady Theobald went away in a dudgeon.     

       "You will have to exercise your authority, Belinda, and make her put them away," she said to Miss Bassett. "It is absurd—besides being atrocious."     

       "Make her!" faltered Miss Bassett.     

       "Yes, 'make her'—though I see you will have your hands full. I never heard such romancing stories in my life. It is just what one might expect from your brother Martin."     

       When Miss Bassett returned, Octavia was standing before the window, watching the carriage drive away, and playing absently with one of her ear-rings as she did so.     

       "What an old fright she is!" was her first guileless remark.     

       Miss Belinda quite bridled.     

       "My dear," she said, with dignity, "no one in Slowbridge would think of applying such a phrase to Lady Theobald."     

       Octavia turned around, and looked at her.     

       "But don't you think she is one?" she exclaimed. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have said it; but you know we haven't any thing as bad as that, even out in Nevada—really!"     

       "My dear," said Miss Belinda, "different countries contain different people; and in Slowbridge we have our standards,"—her best cap trembling a little with her repressed excitement.     

       But Octavia did not appear overwhelmed by the existence of the standards in question. She turned to the window again.     

       "Well, anyway," she said, "I think it was pretty cool in her to order me to take off my diamonds, and save them until I was married. How does she know whether I mean to be married, or not? I don't know that I care about it."     

  

  

  

       CHAPTER V. — LUCIA.     

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