"It seems rather singular to my mind that we should not have known of this before."
"But how should we learn? We none of us know Lord Lansdowne, or even the marquis. I think he is only a second or third cousin. We are a little—just a little set in Slowbridge, you know, my dear: at least, I have thought so sometimes lately."
"I must confess," remarked my lady, "that I have not regarded the matter in that light."
"That is because you have a better right to—to be a little set than the rest of us," was the amiable response.
Lady Theobald did not disclaim the privilege. She felt the sentiment an extremely correct one. But she was not very warm in her manner during the remainder of the call; and, incongruous as such a statement may appear, it must be confessed that she felt that Miss Octavia Bassett must have something to do with these defections on all sides, and that garden-parties, and all such swervings from established Slowbridge custom, were the natural result of Nevada frivolity and freedom of manners. It may be that she felt remotely that even Lord Lansdowne and the Marquis of Lauderdale were to be referred to the same reprehensible cause, and that, but for Octavia Bassett, Mr. Burmistone would not have been educated at Oxford and have come off with honors, and have turned out to be related to respectable people, but would have remained in appropriate obscurity.
"I suppose," she said afterward to Lucia, "that your friend Miss Octavia Bassett is in Mr. Burmistone's confidence, if no one else has been permitted to have that honor. I have no doubt she has known of this approaching entertainment for some weeks."
"I do not know, grandmamma," replied Lucia, putting her letters together, and gaining color as she bent over them. She was wondering, with inward trepidation, what her ladyship would say if she knew the whole truth,—if she knew that it was her granddaughter, and not Octavia Bassett, who enjoyed Mr. Burmistone's confidence.
"Ah!" she thought, "how could I ever dare to tell her?"
The same day Francis Barold sauntered up to pay them a visit; and then, as Mrs. Burnham had prophesied, Lady Theobald heard all she wished to hear, and, indeed, a great deal more.
"What is this I am told of Mr. Burmistone, Francis?" she inquired. "That he intends to give a garden-party, and that Lord Lansdowne is to be one of the guests, and that he has caused it to be circulated that they are cousins."