‘Thank you,’ returned Gilbert, satirically.
Next morning Lucy, radiant with smiles, announced that all was settled. Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy’s Lady Elmira would be brought down for her to try this afternoon, so Gilbert might keep his own horse and come too, which permission he received with a long whistle and glance at Mrs. Kendal, and then walked out of the room.
‘How disobliging!’ said Lucy. ‘Well then, Sophy, you must make your old hat look as well as you can, for I suppose it will not quite do to go without anyone.’
Sophy, like her brother, looked at Mrs. Kendal, and with an eye of indignant appeal and entreaty, while Albinia’s countenance was so full of displeasure, that Lucy continued earnestly, ‘O, mamma, you can’t object. You used to go out riding with papa when he was at Colonel Bury’s.’
‘Well, Lucy!’ exclaimed her sister, ‘I did not think even you capable of such a comparison.’
‘It’s all the same,’ said Lucy tartly, blushing a good deal.
Sophy leapt up to look at her, and Albinia trying to be calm and judicious, demanded, ‘What is the same as what?’
‘Why, Algernon and me,’ was the equally precise reply.
In stately horror, Sophy rose and seriously marched away, leaving, by her look and manner, a species of awe upon both parties, and some seconds passed ere, with crimson blushes, Albania ventured to invite the dreaded admission, by demanding, ‘Now, Lucy, will you be so good as to tell me the meaning of this extraordinary allusion?’
‘Why, to be sure—I know it was very different. Papa was so old, and there were us,’ faltered Lucy, ‘but I meant, you would know how it all is—how those things—’