still more indispensable; so her lips opened in a yielding smile, and Phœbe thanked her rapturously, vague hopes of Robert’s bliss adding zest to the anticipation of the lifting of the curtain which hid the world of brightness.
‘There’s still time,’ said Owen, with his hand on the check-string; ‘which do you patronize? Redmayne or—’
‘Nonsense,’ smiled Honor, ‘we can’t waste our escort upon women’s work.’
‘Ladies never want a gentleman more than when their taste is to be directed.’
‘He is afraid to trust us, Phœbe.’
‘Conscience has spoken,’ said Owen; ‘she knows how she would go and disguise herself in an old dowager’s gown to try to look like sixty!’
‘As for silk gowns—’
‘I positively forbid it,’ he cried, cutting her short; ‘it is five years old!’
‘A reason why I should not have another too grand to wear out.’
‘And you never ought to have had it. Phœbe, it was bought when Lucy was seventeen, on purpose to look as if she was of a fit age for a wall-flower, and so well has the poor thing done its duty, that Lucy hears herself designated as the pretty girl who belongs to the violet and white! If she had known that was coming after her, I won’t answer for the consequence.’