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Rh Mary laughed, though she looked troubled. “You say ‘they’ do all this, and the heroine marries ‘them.’ How many of them does the heroine marry, Janie?” she asked.

“One at a time, and one is quite enough,” insisted Jane, undaunted.

“If madrina marries Lord Kelmscourt, I don’t see how I can bear it,” Florimel declared. “If, when we thought she was dead, we had heard she was alive and was Lady Kelmscourt, we should have been just as glad and just as excited as we could have been. Of course it would be pretty good fun to say, carelessly, to the other girls: ‘My mother, Lady Kelmscourt, did’ something or other. But it’s not the same when you’ve had her and loved her. There’s no use in my trying to think I’ll enjoy visiting Lady Kelmscourt’s English castle; I may, but what’s that? And I think just as Jane does that madrina will be a—countess, is it? What kind of a lord is Lord Kelmscourt? Madrina knows we can’t have garden parties in the winter, can’t even sit in the garden; she knows there won’t be anything, then, but the house. We like it, but Lord Kelmscourt has a palace, or a castle, or tower, or something. The moment she spoke of Lord Wilfrid’s coming,