To be asked to join the party on their tour had become Lucilla’s prime desire, if only that she might not feel neglected,
or driven back to Hiltonbury by absolute necessity; and when the husband and wife came down, the wish was uppermost in her mind.
Eloïsa remarked on her quiet style of dress, and observed that it would be quite the thing in Paris, where people were so much less outré than here.
‘I have nothing to do with Paris.’
‘Oh! surely you go with us!’ said Eloïsa; ‘I like to take you out, because you are in so different a style of beauty, and you talk and save one trouble! Will not she go, Charles?’
‘You see, Lolly wants you for effect!’ he said, sneeringly. ‘But you are always welcome, Cilly; we are woefully slow when you ain’t there to keep us going, and I should like to show you a thing or two. I only did not ask you, because I thought you had not hit it off with Rashe, or have you made it up?’
‘Oh! Rashe and I understand each other,’ said Cilly, secure that though she would never treat Rashe with her former confidence, yet as long as they travelled en grand seigneur, there was no fear of collisions of temper.
‘Rashe is a good creature,’ said Lolly, ‘but she is so fast and so eccentric that I like to have you, Cilly; you look so much younger, and more ladylike.’
‘One thing more,’ said Charles, in his character of head of the family; ‘shouldn’t you look up Miss Charlecote, Cilly? There’s Owen straining the leash pretty hard, and you must look about you, that she does not take up with these new pets of hers and cheat you.’
‘The Fulmorts? Stuff! They have more already than they know what to do with.’