"It will not bear so aristocratic a sound as Lady Grace Chenevix," retorted the mother, tartly, "but remember the old saying, 'What's in a name?' It is you who are absurd, Adela."
"I have opened the matter to Grace, and there'll be no trouble with her," began Lady Acorn to her husband the next morning, halting to say it as she was going into her dressing-room. "No girl knows better than she on which side her bread is buttered!"
"To Grace!" cried the earl, who was only half awake, and spoke from the bedclothes. "Do you mean about Grubb?"
"But it is not Grace he wants. It's Adela."
"I don't think he'd have Grace at a gift--or any of them but Adela. And so you told _her_, making her dream of wedding-rings and orange-blossoms! Poor Gracie, what a sell!"
"Adela will never have him," broke forth the countess, in high vexation, at herself, her husband, Mr. Grubb, and the world in general. "Never!"
"Oh, nonsense, she must be talked into it. With five girls, it's something to get off one of them."
"Adela is not a girl to be 'talked into' anything. She would like a duke. She is the vainest of them all."
"Look at the amount of devilry this will patch up," urged the earl, impressively, as he lifted his head from the pillow. "If he does not get Adela, he is going to sue for his overdue bonds."
"You have no business with bonds, overdue or under-due," snapped his wife. "I declare I have nothing but worry in this life."
"I shall get the two thousand pounds from him, if this comes off; you shall have five hundred of it, as I told you; and my debt to him he will cancel. The man's mad after Adela."
"But she's not mad after him," retorted Lady Acorn.
"Make her so," advised the earl. And her ladyship went forth to her dressing-room, and allowed some of her superfluous temper to explode on her unoffending maid, who stood there waiting for her.
"There, that will do," she impatiently said, when only half dressed, "I'll finish for myself. Go and send Lady Grace to me." And the maid went, gladly enough.
"Gracie, my dear," she began, when her daughter entered, "I am so sorry; so vexed; but it was your papa's fault. He should have been more explicit."
"That which I told you last night--I am so grieved, poor child! It turns out to have been some horrible mistake."