“Nothing less so, my Lady,” said Lizzy. “My father has affairs of urgency to treat at this moment.”
“Oh, I did not exactly allude to your father,—you might have sisters.”
“I have none.”
“An aunt, perhaps?”
“I never heard of one.”
“Lizzy, you are aware, Georgina,” broke in Beecher, whose voice trembled at every word, “was brought up abroad,—she never saw any of her family.”
“How strange! I might even say, how unfortunate!” sighed her Ladyship, superciliously.
“Stranger, and more unfortunate still, your Ladyship would perhaps say, if I were to tell you that I never so much as heard of them.”
“I am not certainly prepared to say that the circumstance is one to be boastful of,” said Lady Lackington, who resented the look of haughty defiance of the other.
“I assure your Ladyship that you are mistaken in attributing to me such a sentiment. I have nothing of which to be boastful.”