‘So that’s what Robert Fulmort told you I did last night,’ said Lucilla, blushing at last, and thoroughly.
‘No, indeed; you didn’t?’ he said, regarding her with an astonished glance.
‘I did wear a dress trimmed with salmon-flies, because of a bet with Lord William,’ said Lucilla, the suffusion deepening on brow, cheek, and throat, as the confiding esteem of her fatherly friend effected what nothing else could accomplish. She would have given the world to have justified his opinion of his late rector’s little daughter, and her spirits seemed gone, though the worst he did was to shake his head at her.
‘If you did not know it, why did you call me that?’ she asked.
‘A merry-andrew?’ he answered; ‘I never meant that you had been one. No; only an old friend like me doesn’t like the notion of your going and dressing up in the morning to amuse a lot of scamps.’
‘I won’t,’ said Lucilla, very low.
‘Well, then,’ began Mr. Prendergast, as in haste to proceed to his own subject; but she cut him short.
‘It is not about Ireland?’
‘No; I know nothing about young ladies; and if Mr. Charteris and your excellent friend there have nothing to say against it, I can’t.’
‘My excellent friend had so much to say against it, that I was pestered into vowing I would go! Tell me not, Mr. Prendergast,—I should not mind giving up to you;’ and she looked full of hope.