‘Not before my elders,’ Phœbe answered, trying to seat herself at the side.
‘The sister at home is mistress of the house,’ he sternly answered. ‘Take your proper place, Phœbe.’
In much discomfort she obeyed, and tried to attend civilly to Sir Nicholas’s observations on the viands, hoping to intercept a few, as she perceived how they chafed her eldest brother.
At last, on Mervyn himself roundly abusing the flavour of the ice-pudding, Augusta not only defended it, but confessed to having herself directed Mrs. Brisbane to the concoction that morning.
‘Mrs. Brisbane shall take orders from no lady but Miss Fulmort, while she is in my house,’ thundered Mervyn.
Phœbe, in agony, began to say she knew not what to Sir Bevil, and he seconded her with equal vehemence and incoherency, till by the time they knew what they were talking of, they were with much interest discussing his little daughter, scarcely turning their heads from one another, till, in the midst of dessert, the voice of Juliana was heard,—‘Sir Bevil, Sir Bevil, if you can spare me any attention—What was the name of that person at Hampstead that your sister told me of?’
‘That person! What, where poor Anne Acton was boarded? Dr. Graham, he called himself, but I don’t believe he was a physician. Horrid vulgar fellow!’
‘Excellent for the purpose, though,’ continued Lady Acton, addressing herself as before to Mr. Crabbe; ‘advertises for nervous or deficient ladies, and boards them on very fair terms: would take her quite off our hands.’
Phœbe turned a wild look of imploring interrogation on Sir Bevil, but a certain family telegraph had electrified him, and his eyes were on the grapes that he was eating with nervous haste. Her blood boiling at what she apprehended, Phœbe could endure her present post no longer, and starting up, made the signal for leaving the dinner-table so suddenly that Augusta choked upon her glass of wine, and carried off her last macaroon in her hand. Before she had recovered breath to rebuke her sister’s precipitation, Phœbe, with boldness and spirit quite new to the sisters, was confronting Juliana, and demanding what she had been saying about Hampstead.
‘Only,’ said Juliana, coolly, ‘that I have found a capital place