After the return of the Lestranges and the Wylders to their country homes, having prevailed on Mrs. Wylder to pay her a visit, lady Ann initiated an attempt to gain her cooperation in the alliance of the houses. She opened upon her the same artillery she had employed against her husband. Mrs. Wylder sat for some time quietly listening but looking so much like her daughter that lady Ann saw the mother’s and not the father’s was the alliance to seek. Thereupon she pulled out the best gun in her battery, as she thought, and began to hint her fear that Miss Wylder had taken a fancy to a person unworthy of her.

“Girls who have not been much in society,” she said, “are not unfrequently the sport of strange infatuations! I myself knew an earl’s daughter who married a baker! I do not, of course, imagine your daughter guilty of the slightest impropriety—”

Scarcely had the word left her lips, when a fury stood before her—eyes flashing and mouth set.

“How dare you hint that my Bab has not behaved with prudence!” cried Mrs. Wylder like a thundercloud.

Lady Ann was not of a breed familiar with fear, but for the first time in her life, except in the presence of her mother, a more formidable person than herself, she did feel a little afraid—of what exactly she would have found it hard to say.

“I did not mean to offend you,” she said, growing a little paler, but at the same time more rigid.

“What sort of mother do you take me for? Offended, indeed! Would you take it kindly, I should like to know, if I had the audacity to say such a thing of one of your girls?”

“I spoke as to a mother who knew what girls are like!”

“You don’t know what my Bab is like!” cried Mrs. Wylder, adding something very much like an imprecation which would shock many.

Lady Ann was offended, and seriously—how could she ally herself with such a woman? But she was silent. For once in her life she did not know the proper thing to say.

Mrs. Wylder rose, turned away, and with a backward glance of blazing wrath, left the room and the house.

“Home, and be quick about it!” she said to the footman as he closed the door of the carriage, and she disappeared in a whirlwind.