"Oh, Lucy! why could you not hold your tongue?" said Lydia.
"I won't hold my tongue!" said Lucy, bursting out into tears. "He is a gentleman."
Then there was great commotion at Fawn Court. After a few moments Lady Fawn followed her son without having said a word to Lucy, and Amelia went with her. Poor Lucy was left with the younger girls, and was no doubt very unhappy. But she was still indignant, and would yield nothing. When Georgina, the fourth daughter, pointed out to her that, in accordance with all rules of good breeding, she should have abstained from asserting that her brother had spoken an untruth, she blazed up again. "It was untrue," she said.
"But, Lucy, people never accuse each other of untruth. No lady should use such a word to a gentleman."
"He should not have said so. He knows that Mr. Greystock is more to me than all the world."
"If I had a lover," said Nina, "and anybody were to say a word against him, I know I'd fly at them. I don't know why Frederic is to have it all his own way."
"Nina, you're a fool," said Diana.
"I do think it was very hard for Lucy to bear," said Lydia.
"And I won't bear it!" exclaimed Lucy. "To think that Mr. Greystock should be so mean as to bear malice about a thing like that wild Indian because he takes his own cousin's part! Of course I'd better go away. You all think that Mr. Greystock is an enemy now; but he never can be an enemy to me."
"We think that Lady Eustace is an enemy," said Cecilia, "and a very nasty enemy, too."