"Upon my word I don't know. There was a little foolish talk, but it meant nothing."
"My lord!"
"What am I to say? I don't want to give offence, and I am heartily sorry that you and your daughter should be under any misapprehension. But as I sit here there was no engagement between us;—nor, if I must speak out, Lady Augustus, could your daughter have thought that there was an engagement."
"Did you not—embrace her?"
"I did. That's the truth."
"And after that you mean to say—"
"After that I mean to say that nothing more was intended." There was a certain meanness of appearance about the mother which emboldened him.
"What a declaration to make to the mother of a young lady, and that young lady the niece of the Duke of Mayfair!"
"It's not the first time such a thing has been done, Lady Augustus."
"I know nothing about that,—nothing. I don't know whom you may have lived with. It never was done to her before."