Burgo had had money dealings with George Vavasor, and knew him,--knew him intimately, and had learned the fact of his cousinship between the heiress and his friend's cousin.
Whereupon in the agony of those weeks in which the sagacious heads were resisting her love, Lady Glencora came to her cousin in Queen Anne Street, and told Alice all that tale.

"Was Alice," she asked, "afraid of the marquises and the countesses, or of all the rank and all the money which they boasted ?" Alice answered that she was not at all afraid of them.

"Then would she permit Lady Glencora and Burgo to see each other in the drawing-room at Queen Anne Street, just once!" Just once,--so that they might arrange that little plan of an elopement.

But Alice could not do that for her newly found cousin.
She endeavoured to explain that it was not the dignity of the sagacious heads which stood in her way, but her woman's feeling of what was right and wrong in such a matter.
"Why should I not marry him ?" said Lady Glencora, with her eyes flashing.

"He is my equal." Alice explained that she had no word to say against such a marriage.
She counselled her cousin to be true to her love if her love was in itself true.