"She was barely seventeen when it happened, you know," added the duchess.
"When what happened?" asked Charlotte Grey, speaking for the first time and making her absorption in a book the excuse.
"Nina's wedding," answered his grace quickly. "Didn't you know we were talking of Nina's wedding?"
Lady Grey yawned behind her hand. Then she smiled. "I thought, perhaps, you were talking of her daughter," she returned.
"It's an adopted daughter. Didn't you know that?" rejoined the duke, reaching for the seed-cake. His tone was more petulant than usual.
"I've heard it," answered Lady Grey, "but what one hears and what one knows are not always the same."
Then the duchess came to the defense. "Why, the child's barely ten," she said.
"They say she looks older—old enough to be fourteen."
"She's large for her age, it's true," the duchess came back bitingly; "but no one with eyes could take her for more than twelve."
"Where did Nina find her?" asked Sir George in an effort to ameliorate his wife's evident discomfiture.