Her Kingdom

ANSTICE found her cousin, as she expected, much in her usual health. She had had a bad cold, but was getting over it, and had come up to London for the purpose of shopping combined with amusement. Anstice was taken everywhere; she found opportunity of seeing her cousins in town, who had been much astonished by the secrecy and suddenness of her marriage, and very much hurt that they had not been asked to it. She shopped a little for herself, and a great deal for Lady Lucy, and it was not till a week had passed that she got any time for a quiet talk with her old cousin.

Then one wet afternoon they sat over a blazing fire together in Lady Lucy's comfortable Early Victorian drawing-room.