from America."
Lady Theobald laid her knife and fork down deliberately.
"Mr. Burmistone?" she said. "Did I understand you to say that you stopped on the roadside to converse with Mr. Burmistone?"
Lucia colored up to her delicate eyebrows and above them.
"I was trying to reach a flower growing on the bank," she said, "and he was so kind as to stop to get it for me. I did not know he was near at first. And then he inquired how you were—and told me he had just heard about the young lady."
"Naturally!" remarked her ladyship sardonically. "It is as I anticipated it would be. We shall find Mr. Burmistone at our elbows upon all occasions. And he will not allow himself to be easily driven away. He is as determined as persons of his class usually are."
"O grandmamma!" protested Lucia, with innocent fervor. "I really do not think he is—like that at all. I could not help thinking he was very gentlemanly and kind. He is so much interested in your school, and so anxious that it should prosper."
"May I ask," inquired Lady Theobald, "how long a time this generous expression of his sentiments occupied? Was this the reason of your forgetting the dinner-hour?"
"We did not"—said Lucia guiltily: "it did not take many minutes. I—I do not think that made me late."
Lady Theobald dismissed this paltry excuse with one remark,—a remark made in the deep tones referred to once before.
"I should scarcely have expected," she observed, "that a granddaughter of mine would have spent half an hour conversing on the public road with the proprietor of Slowbridge Mills."
"O grandmamma!" exclaimed Lucia, the tears rising in her eyes: "it was not half an hour."
"I should scarcely have expected," replied her ladyship, "that a granddaughter of mine would have spent five minutes conversing on the public road with the proprietor of Slowbridge Mills."
To this assault there seemed to be no reply to make.
Prev.
Back
Top