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She looked froreat distress "Miss Lorton, you

see my predicament; please coleford that you do not wish ht before her, Nell responded, almost inaudibly: "Speak! Yes--tell them!"

Lady Luce still seeh: "After all, it , and you'll be very much

disappointed Indeed, it is very likely not true"

Her reluctance was not altogether feigned, for it needed even her

audacity and assurance to ainst the future Countess of Angleford, and under her future

roof; but she braced herself to a supreh she was

really as white as Nell, she looked round boldly, as if confident of the

truth of the thing she was going to say

"Everybody knohat Sir Archie is," she began "He's the worst flirt

and the land Everybody has heard stories of

his delinquencies; some of them are true, but many of them, I dare say,

are false, and I've not the least doubt that Miss Lorton will tell us

that the story that she was about to elope with hi, but that she was stopped by Lord Wolfer, is an absurd

fable The story goes that she did not know, until Lord Wolfer told her