Whereupon Lady Julia confessed that she did know the Gazebees. Mr. Gazebee, she said, was a man who in early life had wanted many advantages, but still he was a very estimable person. He was now in Parliament, and she understood that he was making himself useful. She had not quite approved of Lady Amelia's marriage at the time, and so she had told her very old friend Lady De Courcy; but— And then Lady Julia said many words in praise of Mr. Gazebee, which seemed to amount to this; that he was an excellent sort of man, with a full conviction of the too great honour done to him by the earl's daughter who had married him, and a complete consciousness that even that marriage had not put him on a par with his wife's relations, or even with his wife. And then it came out that Lady Julia in the course of the next week was going to meet the Gazebees at Courcy Castle.
"I am delighted to think that I shall have the pleasure of seeing you there," said Crosbie.
"Indeed!" said Lady Julia.
"I am going to Courcy on Wednesday. That, I fear, will be too early to allow of my being of any service to your ladyship."
Lady Julia drew herself up, and declined the escort which Mr. Crosbie had seemed to offer. It grieved her to find that Lily Dale's future husband was an intimate friend of her friend's, and it especially grieved her to find that he was now going to that friend's house. It was a grief to her, and she showed that it was. It also grieved Crosbie to find that Lady Julia was to be a fellow guest with himself at Courcy Castle; but he did not show it. He expressed nothing but smiles and civil self-congratulation on the matter, pretending that he would have much delight in again meeting Lady Julia; but, in truth, he would have given much could he have invented any manœuvre by which her ladyship might have been kept at home.
"What a horrid old woman she is," said Lily, as they rode back down the avenue. "I beg your pardon, Bernard; for, of course, she is your aunt."
"Yes; she is my aunt; and though I am not very fond of her, I deny that she is a horrid old woman. She never murdered anybody, or robbed anybody, or stole away any other woman's lover."
"I should think not," said Lily.
"She says her prayers earnestly, I have no doubt," continued Bernard, "and gives away money to the poor, and would sacrifice to-morrow any desire of her own to her brother's wish. I acknowledge that she is ugly, and pompous, and that, being a woman, she ought not to have such a long black beard on her upper lip."
"I don't care a bit about her beard," said Lily. "But why did she tell me to do my duty? I didn't go there to have a sermon preached to me."