In answer to this Margaret would say that it didn’t signify, and that it wasn’t on that account; and I have no doubt but that the two women thoroughly understood each other.

There was a subject on which, in spite of all her respect, Mrs Buggins ventured to give Miss Mackenzie much advice, and to insist on that advice strongly. Mrs Buggins was very anxious that the future “baronet’s lady” should go out upon her grand visit with a proper assortment of clothing. That argument of the baronet’s lady was the climax of Mrs Buggins’ eloquence: “You, my dear, as is going to be one baronet’s lady is going to a lady who is going to be another baronet’s lady, and it’s only becoming you should go as is becoming.”

Margaret declared that she was not going to be anybody’s lady, but Mrs Buggins altogether pooh-poohed this assertion.

“That, Miss, is your predestination,” said Mrs Buggins, “and well you’ll become it. And as for money, doesn’t that old party who found it all out say reg’lar once a month that there’s whatever you want to take for your own necessaries? and you that haven’t had a shilling from him yet! If it was me, I’d send him in such a bill for necessaries as ‘ud open that old party’s eyes a bit, and hurry him up with his lawsuits.”

The matter was at last compromised between her and Margaret, and a very moderate expenditure for smarter clothing was incurred.

On the day appointed Mrs Mackenzie again came, and Margaret was carried off to Cavendish Square. Here she found herself suddenly brought into a mode of life altogether different from anything she had as yet experienced. The Mackenzies were people who went much into society, and received company frequently at their own house. The first of these evils for a time Margaret succeeded in escaping, but from the latter she had no means of withdrawing herself. There was very much to astonish her at this period of her life, but that which astonished her perhaps more than anything else was her own celebrity. Everybody had heard of the Lion and the Lamb, and everybody was aware that she was supposed to represent the milder of those two favourite animals. Everybody knew the story of her property, or rather of the property which had never in truth been hers, and which was now being made to pass out of her hands by means of a lawsuit, of which everybody spoke as though it were the best thing in the world for all the parties concerned. People, when they mentioned Sir John Ball to her—and he was often so mentioned—never spoke of him in harsh terms, as though he were her enemy. She observed that he was always named before her in that euphuistic language which we naturally use when we speak to persons of those who are nearest to them and dearest to them. The romance of the thing, and not the pity of it, was the general subject of discourse, so that she could not fail to perceive that she was generally regarded as the future wife of Sir John Ball.