"Oh, of course not. To be sure not.
We have high authority for that, Mrs.
Begbie. But then ye see it's often such a
very long run!"

The above conversation is a pretty fair
specimen of the light in which the Princess
de' Barletti's appearance at Shipley was
looked on by the Daneshire society.

Could Veronica have overheard one
morning's chat in any dressing-room or
boudoir whose inmates' favour or countenance
she desired, she would have at
once despaired of making good her footing
as a member of the "county" circles. It
may seem strange that she had ever for a
moment conceived the hope that the gentry
of the neighbourhood would receive her.
But she had an exaggerated idea of the
power of money. And she thought that
the bright refulgence of her new rank
would dazzle the world from a too close inspection
of old blots and spots on her fair
fame. And then it had all been vague in
her mind. There had perhaps been hardly
any definite expectation of what would
occur when she should be at Shipley.
But she had had a general idea of awaking
envy and admiration and astonishment;
of dashing past old acquaintances in a
brilliant equipage; of being addressed as
"your highness" within hearing of unpolished
Daneshire persons devoid of a
proper sense of the distinction of classes,
and who had habitually spoken of her in
her childish days as "the vicar's little
lass!" And these things in prospect had
appeared to her to suffice. But after a day
or two she became aware how strongly she
desired to be visited and received by persons
whose approval or non-approval made
Fate in Daneshire society. She was
entirely unnoticed except by one person.

This solitary exception served but to
emphasise more strongly the marked neglect
of the rest. Lord George Seagrave
called on her. Lord George had taken
Hammick Lodge for a term of years. He
had never been down there at that time of
year before. But his health wouldn't stand
a London season; getting old, you know,
and that sort of thing. So, as he had to
pay for the place, he had come down to the
Lodge to pass a month or so until it should
be time to go to Schwalbach. And he had
heard that Prince Cesare and the Princes
s—whom he had the honour of perfectly
remembering as Miss Levincourt—were at
the Crown. So he had called, and that
sort of thing. And he should be uncommonly
charmed if the prince would come
and dine with him and one or two friends,
any day that might suit him. And Cesare
accepted the invitation with something like
eagerness, and announced that he should
drive himself over to Hammick Lodge very
soon. This promise he kept, having his
horses harnessed to a nondescript vehicle,
which the landlord of the Crown called a
dog-cart; and sending the London coach-man,
who sat beside him, to the verge of
apoplexy by his unprofessional and
incompetent handling of the ribbons. The
vicar had pleaded his parish duties as a
reason why he could not go very frequently
to Shipley Magna. Maud was with the
Sheardowns. And besides, Hugh Lockwood,
in his interview with Veronica, had
so plainly conveyed his determination to
keep his future wife apart from her, that
Veronica had chosen not to risk a refusal,
by asking Maud to come to her. They had
met but for a few minutes on the evening
when Veronica had driven her father back
to the vicarage. Veronica had not alighted.
She had looked at her old home across the
drear little graveyard, and had turned and
gone back in her grand carriage. But on
that same occasion she had seen Mr. Plew.
There needed but a small share of feminine
acuteness to read in the surgeon's face the
intense and painful emotions which the
sight of her awakened within him. She
was still paramount over him. She could
still play with idle, careless, capricious
fingers on his heart-strings. It was a pastime
that she did not intend to deny herself.

But what she could not see, and had not
nobleness enough even to guess at, was the
intense pity, the passion of sorrow over the
tarnished brightness of her purity, that
swelled her old lover's heart almost to
breaking. She had never possessed the
qualities needful to inspire the best reverence
that a man can give to a woman.
And it may be that in the little surgeon's
inmost conscience there had ever been some
unacknowledged sense of this. But he had
looked upon her with such idolatrous
admiration; he had been so unselfishly content
to worship from a humble distance;
he had so associated her beauty and
brightness with everything that was bright and
beautiful in his life, that her degradation
had wounded him to the quick. She had
never been to him as other mortals, who
must strive and struggle with evil and
weakness. He had not even thought of
her as of a woman fast clinging to some
rock of truth in the great ocean of existence,