"It is all too evident that you are not to be trusted out alone, my dear," she said. "Why, Lucy!"—for something like tears had began to glitter in Lucy's gentle eyes—"why, you silly girl, I am only in fun! Why should you not direct a stranger to the railway station, and why shouldn't you give him the fern he coveted, poor, smoke-dried Londoner. There was nothing wrong in it."
"You are quite sure, Leslie? Afterward—afterward, as I was walking home, it seemed to me that I had perhaps, been—unladylike." The awful word left her lips in a horrified whisper.
"My dear, you couldn't be if you tried," said Leslie, with quiet decision. "Now run and put your things away and we will talk it all over again while we are having supper. 'Unladylike!'" She took the gentle, 'good'-looking face in her hands and kissed it. "You are very clever, Lucy, but that is the one thing you could never attain to."
They sat for a long time over their simple meal, talking of their school, discussing the various capacities of the pupils, arranging classes, and so on; and once or twice Leslie referred to Lucy's 'adventures,' and declared that she did not believe a word of them, and that Lucy had invented the whole to amuse her, little suspecting that the big house Lucy had seen was the famous White Place belonging to Lady Eleanor Dallas, that the horseman was Lord Yorke Auchester, and that the stranger who "looked like a lawyer" and who had walked off with Lucy's fern was Ralph Duncombe.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
WAS YORKE HAPPY?
Lady Eleanor was happy, and, unlike a great many persons, was not ashamed to admit that she was.
"Why should I be ashamed or try to hide my joy?" she said to Lady Denby, who remarked her niece's high spirits, and her evident satisfaction with her own condition and the world in general. "I am happy! happy! happy! and every one may know it."
"They do know it, my dear," said Lady Denby, dryly.