"Poor woman," says Luttrell, regretfully, "I think I could have forgiven her had she not worn that very verdant gown."
"My dear fellow, I thought the contrast between it and her cheeks the most perfect thing I ever saw. It is evident you have not got the eye of an artist," Sir Penthony says, rather unfeelingly.
"I never saw any one so distressingly healthy," says Maud, still plaintively. "Fat people are my aversion. I don't mind a comfortable-looking body, but she is much too stout."
"Let us alter that last remark and say she has had too much stout, and perhaps we shall define her," remarks Tedcastle. "I hate a woman who shows her food."
"The way she traduced those Sedleys rather amused me," Molly says, laughing. "I certainly thought her opinion of her neighbors very pronounced."
"She shouldn't have any opinion," says Lady Stafford, with decision. "You, my dear Molly, take an entirely wrong view of it. Such people as the Buscarlets, sprung from nobody knows where, or cares to know, should be kept in their proper place, and be sat upon the very instant they develop a desire to progress."
"How can you be so illiberal?" exclaims Molly, aghast at so much misplaced vehemence. "Why should they not rise with the rest of the world?"
"Eleanor has quite a penchant for the Buscarlets," says Marcia, with a sneer; "she has quite adopted them, and either will not, or perhaps does not, see their enormities."
Nobody cares to notice this impertinence, and Mr. Potts says, gravely:
"Lady Stafford has never forgiven Mrs. Buscarlet because once, at a ball here, she told her she was looking very 'distangy.' Is that not true?"