CHAPTER XXX.

AGE PLEADS.

IRIS had been out for a little more air and a saunter in the greater space of Regent's Park, when, just as she re-entered the house, she met Mrs. Haigh in such a state of consternation that the girl's roused imagination could settle on no smaller calamities than the kitchen chimney on fire, to the destruction of the eight o'clock dinner, or to the first clerk in the great banking-house having announced his intention to set up an establishment of his own. But Mrs. Haigh speedily undeceived her.

'Oh, my dear Miss Compton, she is here! Lady Fermor is here, and I dared not attempt to deceive her about your being with us; indeed, she did not ask; she simply said, "Take me to Miss Compton," and she walked straight into the drawing-room, dismissing

me with a nod, and staring about her without troubling to return the bows of the assembled ladies, to whom I gave her a general introduction. They have all left the room, and she is sitting there alone, for Haigh has declined to have anything to do with her. I am afraid you must go to her and find out what she wants. If it is anything reasonable, if she wishes to board here along with you, I will do my best, though I do not know if Mrs. Judge Penfold and the rest will consent to be ignored, even by a viscountess-your grandfather was a viscount, wasn't he, dear Miss Compton? not an earl, as I am always inclined to make him-when they are all private ladies. If she thinks your board too high, though the times are terribly expensive

I do not think that will be the reason of her coming, Mrs. Haigh. I shall go to her

at once.'

The thought of her grandmother away from Lambford, from which she had not stirred for a dozen years, had a great effect on Iris. She felt it when she went into the drawing-room, where a moderate amount of second-hand, frequently incongruous furni

1

ture was made to stand for a great deal, and for the accomplishment of entire harmony, to which the separate possessions of the different ladies, with the traces of their various avocations, lent an additional unhomelike heterogeneousness.

Whatever the person most concerned may have felt, it was a shock to her descendant when she saw the aged woman rooted up from all her old surroundings. Iris had been accustomed to think of her grandmother as about as stationary and constant in her attributes and actions as the fixed stars, as accustomed to be law to her house, the author and ruler of its whole economy, which for that matter proceeded from her will and existed for her pleasure.

Therefore the contrast was great of finding Lady Fermor seated uncomfortably in a chair which was the opposite of her own at Lambford, with Mrs. Rugely's easel at one side, and Mrs. Calcott's basket heaped with the badies' socks and pinafores, which she was always manufacturing for charitable bazaars, on the other, and Mrs. Judge Penfold's dog barking, and Ju-ju's kitten putting up its tail, as if to assail the intruder.

Iris's heart smote her, and she advanced quickly to her persecutress, crying out :

Oh, grandmamma! I am sorry I have given you so much trouble, if you have come up to town on my account.'

You may be sorry,' said emphatically, extending two grand-daughter. 'I have journey on your account.

Lady Fermor

fingers to her come a long I am here to

fetch you away; so you had better get ready as soon as possible, and not keep me waiting longer than you can help. The carriage is at the door.'

Iris was taken aback. This was not like the scoffing leave to go which had been granted to her at their last meeting. To return to Lambford, though she had not been very happy in Fitzroy Square, was never what Iris had intended; all the old objections to her residence with her grandmother, which had grown unbearable, might still remain in full force. The loathed apparition of Major Pollock, of which she had got rid lately, seemed to rise again before her and make her flesh creep. For anything Iris knew he might have come up with her grandmother to London-he might be in the

carriage outside, ready to spring upon her, in a figure.

She could not resign herself again to the old tyranny, the old taunts and indignities which had threatened to thrust her on the most miserable fate that could befall a woman; not for her native air and the place and the people she had known and loved so long; not for Lucy Acton, who had expressed herself by letter as dubious of the step Iris had taken, even while condoling with her most sincerely on the causes which had led to it, could Iris make so bootless a sacrifice. But the assurance of the shrivelledup wreck of a woman before her staggered Iris, and caused her to hesitate what to say or do.

Lady Fermor delivered herself of a gesture of impatience, and called out harshly :

'Have I not stooped enough, girl? Would you have me humble myself in the dirt to tell you I'll never mention poor old Pollock's name to you again? If you had not been a prim, scared idiot, you would have known it was not in earnest. I have got one of my other grand-daughters, Marianne Dugdale, to be a companion for