She should have known Alice better; and should also have known the world better.

But her own reverence for her own noble relatives was so great that she could not understand, even yet, that all such feeling was wanting to her niece.

It was to her impossible that the expressed opinion of such an one as the Countess of Midlothian, owning her relationship and solicitude, and condescending at the same time to express friendship,--she could not, I say, understand that the voice of such an one, so speaking, should have no weight whatever.

But I think that she had been quite right in keeping out of Alice's way at the moment of the arrival of the letter.

Alice read it, slowly, and then replacing it in its envelope, leaned back quietly in her chair,--with her eyes fixed upon the teapot on the table.