It was shortly after this episode that Heaven, bearing no malice, had thrown Lady Adela into the track of Lady Agnes Mortimer. Lady Agnes was a single woman of small means, and an eccentricity that passed all bounds. However, she was something of a personage, by virtue of her name as well as of her character, and the great-niece whom she was trying to marry might do very well for Kingston Darnley. So thought Lady Adela, pondering the many eligible qualities of the girl who would one day be daughter to a Duke of March and Brakelond, and who, besides, had so many qualities that endearingly resembled her own--at least, so far as kindness, devotion, sweetness, and piety went. She brought her son, accordingly, into contact with Miss Mortimer, and was surreptitiously overjoyed to find him obediently disposed. As for Lady Agnes, she contemplated with equanimity the introduction of the Darnley wealth into the impoverished House of Mortimer, and tried to soften down her asperities lest the match should be impeded.
The House of March and Brakelond no longer loomed so large in the public eye as once it had, and as Gundred still felt it should. The reigning Duke was an imbecile, uncomfortably poor and very aged. There was no Duchess, no near relations, nothing to give prominence or interest even to the daughter of the heir-apparent. Gundred Mortimer attracted little notice in London, keeping house parsimoniously for her father in Russell Square, and going out on the rather shabby arm of Lady Agnes. Lady Agnes was accepted because her eccentricities made her so incalculable as to be amusing; but Gundred was soon found to be almost depressingly normal and correct. There were scores of more naturally noticeable girls in London; Miss Mortimer, as Miss Mortimer, had no sort of personal importance, whatever power and dignity Fate might see fit to bestow at some later date on ‘Lady Gundred.’ Nicely mannered, nicely minded, nicely dressed, Miss Mortimer was an inconspicuous, if pleasant, figure in the crowd, and the elevation of her father to the dukedom seemed so remote that there was no according her any advance on her face-value. Had the prospect of finding her mistress and deputy Duchess at Brakelond only been more actual or imminent, then the world might have lent Miss Mortimer credit and respect on the reversion; but Mr. Mortimer and his daughter had been Mr. and Miss Mortimer for so many years now that no one found it easy to think of them as prospective ‘Duke of March and Brakelond’ and ‘Lady Gundred.’ Whenever anyone thought now of the Mortimers, it was always of the old--incredibly old--imbecile, dying eternally at Brakelond among his parrots.