This phrase certainly was a little hard for the mother to bear. All the world had acknowledged, so Mrs. Grantly had taught herself to believe, that Griselda was undoubtedly the beauty of the season. Marquises and lords were already contending for her smiles, and paragraphs had been written in newspapers as to her profile. It was too hard to be told, after that, that her daughter had been “quite admired.” Such a phrase might suit a pretty little red-cheeked milkmaid of a girl.
“She cannot, of course, come near your girls in that respect,” said Mrs. Grantly, very quietly. Now the Miss Proudies had not elicited from the fashionable world any very loud encomiums on their beauty. Their mother felt the taunt in its fullest force, but she would not essay to do battle on the present arena. She jotted down the item in her mind, and kept it over for Barchester and the chapter. Such debts as those she usually paid on some day, if the means of doing so were at all within her power.
“But there is Miss Dunstable, I declare,” she said, seeing that that lady had entered the room; and away went Mrs. Proudie to welcome her distinguished guest.
“And so this is a conversazione, is it?” said that lady, speaking, as usual, not in a suppressed voice. “Well, I declare, it’s very nice. It means conversation, don’t it, Mrs. Proudie?”
“Ha, ha, ha! Miss Dunstable, there is nobody like you, I declare.”
“Well, but don’t it? and tea and cake? and then, when we’re tired of talking, we go away,—isn’t that it?”
“But you must not be tired for these three hours yet.”
“Oh, I’m never tired of talking; all the world knows that. How do, bishop? A very nice sort of thing this conversazione, isn’t it now?”
The bishop rubbed his hands together and smiled, and said that he thought it was rather nice.
“Mrs. Proudie is so fortunate in all her little arrangements,” said Miss Dunstable.