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considered for a little. Surely such maidenly demureness was excessive! Unless Sir Alex had in some way presumed, and frightened the girl? Reflecting upon Sir Alex’s character as it was known to her, she discarded that possibility at once.
    Conceiving that the situation required either much more thought or a firm hand, Lady Thane chose the latter as being more productive of results. “My dear, you must consider the alternatives. If your grandmama is no longer able to provide for you, you must know that you will have to endure a guardian who may not be at all the way you would like. And of course, if you had your own establishment, or were betrothed so that you would be in the way of having it, things would be much more convenable for you.”
    Clare sighed. “I do know, ma’am. And I should not like it, to have an old man as a guardian. Uncle Horsham is very old, you know.”
    Lady Thane, perceiving that she had made substantial progress in the last few minutes, added a further thought that had just occurred to her. “Sir Alexander, you know, would certainly meet with my approval. And I know, your grandmother’s approval as well.”
    “But—”
    “And there is no one else, I think, who has paid you so much attention?”
    “There is one other... ” Clare said, after reflection.
    Lady Thane’s heart sank. “If you mean Harry Rowse, my child, no one in her right mind would encourage him. He is not at all the thing, you know.” She looked intently at her charge. “You surely have not developed a tendre for him, have you?”
    “I have talked with him not above three times,” said Clare, “but he is amusing. And he was kind, to take the trouble to see that I was not left out. That was at the duchess’s card party, ma’am, while you were playing cards.”
    “Kind” was not the word Lady Thane would have used, but she thought better of explaining exactly what her opinion of that rake was. Instead, she chose to expand on the virtues of Sir Alexander Ferguson, and at length achieved a result which, while it was not exactly what she wished, yet would serve to allow Sir Alexander to press his suit.
    “Well, then,” said Lady Thane, rising and shaking out the folds of her morning gown, “I am glad to see that you will be agreeable. I confess I had not thought, to begin with, that you would be such a success, your first season, and getting off on the wrong foot with Lord Choate to begin with, too. But all’s well that ends well, I say. Best get some rest before tonight. You will want to look your best!”
    With a surprisingly roguish glance, Lady Thane tripped out, leaving her goddaughter behind. It was as well that Lady Thane, believing firmly in the wisdom of her own words and congratulating herself on her good fortune at being so successful in her obligation to Clare and to Lady Penryck, did not see the results of her information.
    For Clare had dropped her head into her hands, and began to sob as she had not done since Miss Peek, her governess, had been called home to tend her ailing sister, Sara, two years before.

7 .
    Carlton House, so Sir Alexander informed Clare, had undergone a remarkable transformation in the past years, since the prince regent, then Prince of Wales, had taken it over upon the death of his grandmother, who had let it fall sadly into disrepair.
    “Didn’t have the columns then,” interposed Mr. Totten, rousing himself from his dreams of vast winnings at Crockford’s. “Holland put them on.”
    Henry Holland had rebuilt the Pall Mall facade, added a long colonnade of Ionic columns, broken by two gates, in order to screen the royal residence from the curious passerby. Inside, Clare was informed by Amelia Totten, who had never seen the interior, there was a hall that was eight-sided, and a double staircase, and the most marvelous cabinetwork and ornamentation, in the latest fashion, altogether making a wondrously harmonious ap pearance.
    “But,” continued Amelia, “it is the gardens