"
Hesper acknowledged the compliment with a very pleasant smile. If
it be true, as I may not doubt, that women, in dressing, have the
fear of women and not of men before their eyes, then a compliment
from some women must be more acceptable to some than a compliment
from any man but the specially favored.
"Thank you a thousand times," she drawled, sweetly. "Then I shall
expect you. Ask for my maid. She will take you to my room. Good-
by for the present."
As soon as she was gone, Mary, her mind's eye full of her figure,
her look, her style, her motion, gave herself to the important
question of the dress conceived by Hesper; and during her dinner-
hour contrived to cut out and fit to her own person the pattern
of a garment such as she supposed intended in the not very lucid
description she had given her. When she was free, she set out
with it for Durnmelling.
It was rather a long walk, the earlier part of it full of sad
reminders of the pleasure with which, greater than ever
accompanied her to church, she went to pay her Sunday visit at
Thornwick; but the latter part, although the places were so near,
almost new to her: she had never been within the gate of
Durnmelling, and felt curious to see the house of which she had
so often heard.
The butler opened the door to her--an elderly man, of conscious
dignity rather than pride, who received the "young person"
graciously, and, leaving her in the entrance-hall, went to find
"Miss Mortimer's maid," he said, though there was but one lady's-
maid in the establishment.
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