and yet she was anxious not to spoil all his pleasure among his friends. She told him, however, that Lady Lufton was very angry, "unreasonably angry I must say," she put in, in order to show that she had not sided against him. "And indeed we have quite quarrelled, and this has made me unhappy, as it will you, dearest; I know that. But we both know how good she is at heart, and Justinia thinks that she had other things to trouble her; and I hope it will all be made up before you come home; only, dearest Mark, pray do not be longer than you said in your last letter." And then there were three or four paragraphs about the babies and two about the schools, which I may as well omit.
She had just finished her letter, and was carefully folding it for its envelope, with the two whole five-pound notes imprudently placed within it, when she heard a footstep on the gravel path which led up from a small wicket to the front door. The path ran near the drawing-room window, and she was just in time to catch a glimpse of the last fold of a passing cloak. "It is Justinia," she said to herself; and her heart became disturbed at the idea of again discussing the morning's adventure. "What am I to do," she had said to herself before, "if she wants me to beg her pardon? I will not own before her that he is in the wrong."
And then the door opened—for the visitor made her entrance without the aid of any servant—and Lady Lufton herself stood before her. "Fanny," she said at once, "I have come to beg your pardon."
"Oh, Lady Lufton!"
"I was very much harassed when you came to me just now;—by more things than one, my dear, But, nevertheless, I should not have spoken to you of your husband as I did, and so I have come to beg your pardon."
Mrs. Robarts was past answering by the time that this was said,—past answering at least in words; so she jumped up and, with her eyes full of tears, threw herself into her old friend's arms. "Oh, Lady Lufton!" she sobbed forth again.
"You will forgive me, won't you?" said her ladyship, as she returned her young friend's caress. "Well, that's right. I have not been at all happy since you left my den this morning, and I don't suppose you have. But, Fanny, dearest, we love each other too well and know each other too thoroughly, to have a long quarrel, don't we?"
"Oh, yes, Lady Lufton."
"Of course we do. Friends are not to be picked up on the road-side every day; nor are they to be thrown away lightly. And now sit down, my love, and let us have a little talk. There, I must take my bonnet off. You have pulled the strings so that you have almost choked me." And Lady Lufton deposited her bonnet on the table and seated herself comfortably in the corner of the sofa.
"My dear," she said, "there is no duty which any woman owes to any other human being at all equal to that which she owes to her husband, and, therefore, you were quite right to stand up for Mr. Robarts this morning."
