Lady Lufton after receiving her guests introduced Lucy to Griselda Grantly. Miss Grantly smiled graciously, bowed slightly, and then remarked in the lowest voice possible that it was exceedingly cold. A low voice, we know, is an excellent thing in woman.
Lucy, who thought that she was bound to speak, said that it was cold, but that she did not mind it when she was walking. And then Griselda smiled again, somewhat less graciously than before, and so the conversation ended. Miss Grantly was the elder of the two, and having seen most of the world, should have been the best able to talk, but perhaps she was not very anxious for a conversation with Miss Robarts.
“So, Robarts, I hear that you have been preaching at Chaldicotes,” said the archdeacon, still rather loudly. “I saw Sowerby the other day, and he told me that you gave them the fag end of Mrs. Proudie’s lecture.”
“It was ill-natured of Sowerby to say the fag end,” said Robarts. “We divided the matter into thirds. Harold Smith took the first part, I the last—”
“And the lady the intervening portion. You have electrified the county between you; but I am told that she had the best of it.”
“I was so sorry that Mr. Robarts went there,” said Lady Lufton, as she walked into the dining-room leaning on the archdeacon’s arm.
“I am inclined to think he could not very well have helped himself,” said the archdeacon, who was never willing to lean heavily on a brother parson, unless on one who had utterly and irrevocably gone away from his side of the Church.
“Do you think not, archdeacon?”
“Why, no: Sowerby is a friend of Lufton’s—”
“Not particularly,” said poor Lady Lufton, in a deprecating tone.