"Sophie, my dear, that is not a proper way of speaking."
"But, dear mamma, don't you?"
"If somebody has told me wrong, that has not been my fault," said Lady Rowley.
The poor woman was so evidently disconcerted that Caroline Spalding was quite unhappy. "My dear Lady Rowley, there has been no fault. And why shouldn't it have been so? Wallachia is so clever, that it is the most natural thing in the world to have thought."
"I cannot say that I agree with you there," said Lady Rowley, somewhat recovering herself.
"You must know the whole truth now," said Nora, turning to her friend, "and you must not be angry with us if we laugh a little at your poetess. Mamma has been frantic with Mr. Glascock because he has been going to marry,—whom shall I say,—her edition of you. She has sworn that he must be insane. When we have sworn how beautiful you were, and how nice, and how jolly, and all the rest of it,—she has sworn that you were at least a hundred, and that you had a red nose. You must admit that Miss Petrie has a red nose."
"Is that a sin?"
"Not at all in the woman who has it; but in the man who is going to marry it,—yes. Can't you see how we have all been at cross-purposes, and what mamma has been thinking and saying of poor Mr. Glascock? You mustn't repeat it, of course; but we have had such a battle here about it. We thought that mamma had lost her eyes and her ears and her knowledge of things in general. And now it has all come out! You won't be angry?"
"Why should I be angry?"
"Miss Spalding," said Lady Rowley, "I am really unhappy at what has occurred, and I hope that there may be nothing more said about it. I am quite sure that somebody told me wrong, or I should not have fallen into such an error. I beg your pardon,—and Mr. Glascock's!"