BELGRAVIA JANUARY, 1892. The Honourable Jane. BY ANNIE THOMAS (MRS. PENDER CUDLIP), "THAT OTHER WOMAN," Author of EYRE OF BLENDON,” “DENNIS DONNE," "PLAYED OUT," ETC., ETC. CHAPTER I. THE NEWS COMES. THERE is an unwonted stir one morning in June in the ordinarily quiet, not to say stagnant, household of Major the Honourable John Herries. Jane, the youngest daughter of the house, opens her slumber-laden eyes and blinks them with a mixture of alarm and bewilderment at the dazzling sunbeams which are streaming in at her uncurtained window, as after a sound as of a mighty and rushing wind a young lady rushes into the room, her white cashmere tea-gown streaming several yards behind her, with the words: "Grandpapa is Dead! Get up, you lazy little pig, and come and congratulate papa on being Lord Roydmore!" In response to this adjuration, Jane slips out of bed and into a threadbare, red flannel dressing-gown, from the hem of which her shapely, slim young legs protrude for many inches. It is the first time within her memory that death has entered the family realms, and she is astonished and a little disgusted with herself for not feeling shocked at the intelligence. She feels that she is called upon to say something, and looks at her excited sister for an inspiration. Something in that sister's pretty, frankly expressive face distracts her mind from the sorrowful part of the subject, and leads her to say: "You look quite cross about it, Flo!" "Cross!" says Florence, with an unmistakably ill-tempered stamp of a prettily-slippered foot. "Cross! You little noodle, you don't expect me to look pleased and grateful for the good luck having come just too late for me to share in it. What should I be but 'cross' at the idea of having been thrown away all these years in Bath, and deluded at the last into such a marriage as I am going to make to-morrow, in despair of getting anything better. Don't grin at me." "I wasn't grinning. I wouldn't be so heartless, with grandpapa just dead, and you just going to be married!" Jane says indignantly. "Well, don't gape at me then. Oh! you lucky girl! To think that you will come in for it all! You, who haven't an idea of making the best of such looks as you have, while I shall be buried alive and half-boiled in a hole among the Somersetshire hills. Why, oh, why didn't grandpapa die six months ago, before I promised to marry Geoffrey Graves? It will make me sick when I see your name, The Honourable Jane Herries,' at all sorts of fashionable functions that I've never been given the chance of attending. You'll be presented, too! I feel it. It's a shame that all this good should fall to your lot, and that I should have had none of it-I, the eldest daughter, and ever so much the prettiest." She pauses, panting in her indignant agitation at the thought of the desperate injustice with which fate has treated her, and Jane strives to offer a modicum of comfort. "You are the prettiest, that's something, you know. And you've always liked Geoffrey's place so much, and he will let you do as you like; and he's rich, quite as rich as papa will be, I should think." "Please don't talk about things you don't understand," Florence replies haughtily. "I liked his place when I had nothing before me but the prospect of stewing on in Bath for an unlimited number of years. As for his being rich, he seemed so to me yesterday, when I was only the daughter of a poor, half-pay Major. But now I am the Honourable Florence Herries, eldest daughter of Lord Roydmore; and when I think of how well I should have faced the position you will have when you come out, I could throw this brush at your head. Are you going to condole with and congratulate papa?" Jane would give every small possession she has in the world to avoid this ceremony, but her sister's sway over her is absolute. "I hardly know what to say to papa grandpapa was always so cross to us all. scold much in Heaven?" Florence laughs pettishly. about it. You see I wonder if he will Amiability is certainly not the rock on which we Herries split," she says contemptuously. "When papa sent for me to tell me the news just now, he sent a regular royal salute of strong language into the air at the idea of my wedding-breakfast being wasted. It's too late to countermand it, you see, and still we must put off all the guests. I offered to put off the wedding, but papa jumped at me, and said he 'would have no nonsense of that kind.' I never in all my life saw a girl do her hair as hideously as you do, Jane. Oh, dear, if I had been going to stay at home I should have got papa to send you to a school in Brussels to polish off your angles and have your hair combed into becomingness. You never can be grateful enough to me for marrying and getting out of your way, now your way is going to be pleasant. You never can do enough for me in return. Why, if I had stayed at home I shouldn't have let you come out until you were twenty, and now papa says he shall put you at the head of the London house at once. Ridiculous! and you only seventeen! While her sister has been talking, Jane has made her toilette as best she can under the circumstances of the severity which characterises all the arrangements of her apartment. Her looking-glass has a flaw in it which makes one side of her face look puffy, while the other looks pallid and wizened. Moreover, the regulating screw has vanished, and the glass has to be propped into position by a book, or a brush, or a boot, or any other article that comes handy. If her face got a fair reflection of itself, Jane would not go down to breakfast each day with the lowly opinion she now holds of her own personal appear ance. "Is papa busy—or has he anything to do?" she asks hesita tingly, as she accompanies her sister downstairs to their father's study-a room in which he breakfasts, but never reads. Newspapers are the only literature that interests him, and these he sees at the Pump-room every day when he goes to drink that glass of nasty water which it is supposed has regulated his liver for the last ten years. do-he is going up to busy' this morning," "He really will have something to London at once, so he won't be a bit Florence says reassuringly. Then, together, the sisters step into their father's presence, and poor Jane flounders into error at once by greeting him as "Lord Roydmore." "I'm not that till after the funeral," he says testily, pushing away his plate, on which an untasted omelette, steaming forth its savoury odours, has just been placed before him. "Florence, why don't you see that your sister has decent morning dresses? If there's one thing I hate on a woman more than another, it's a cotton dress-a starched cotton dress that crackles!" He pauses, draws the hot-water plate with the omelette upon it before him again, and glances peevishly from one to the other of his daughters as he begins his repast. Florence has thrown herself negligently but very gracefully into the easiest chair in his room. Jane is standing, shifting her weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. They have both been kept in awe by their father's fretfulness and habit of faultfinding from their cradles, but Florence is going to be emancipated to-morrow, and fears him no longer. "I thought you didn't care what Jane wore; you always told me to make the best of myself, and dress Jane cheaply till she was marriageable-and she certainly isn't that yet," Miss Herries explains. The new Lord Roydmore looks at his eldest daughter dubiously, tastes the omclette, finds it delicious, and carefully conceals all expression of satisfaction thereat; indicates by a quick motion of his head to Jane that he is ready for his coffee, and as she sugars and creams it to the requisite point of richness, says: "Jane is a different matter now. She will join me in town directly after the funeral, and I shall expect to see her decently dressed. You must go and order all that she wants to-day” "Papa! I have so much to do for myself. My things are |