CHAPTER V.
"I WANT TO BE JUST LIKE YOU."
"My dear Estelle," said the Duchess of Downsbury, "I had hoped that with returning health you would have more earnestness and animation—be more like your early self."
"Possibly my early self was a great simpleton, mamma, and as for animation, most girls are overdoing that. Calmness, what you call indifference, may be my style. Don't you think people like it, mamma?"
"Your style is simply perfection," said her grace, "and there are two or three eligible men here just now who plainly think so; if you could only give them a little encouragement."
"I'm quite sick of eligible men, mamma. Is it ten or a dozen that I have 'declined with thanks?' I do not give them encouragement because they offer themselves soon enough without it. They don't interest me."
"And what will interest you?" asked the perplexed duchess.
Lady Estelle waved to and fro, in a meditative manner, her feather fan, as if considering what she could desire.
"I believe, now I think of it, it would interest me to go and see that child the Bishop of Lansdown told us of."
"My dear, that is not a nice story at all. It is suspicious."