"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed nervously, "there is Lady Theobald."
Lady Theobald, having been making calls of state, was returning home rather later than usual, when, in driving up High Street, her eye fell upon Miss Bassett's garden. She put up her eyeglasses, and gazed through them severely; then she issued a mandate to her coachman.
"Dobson," she said, "drive more slowly."
She could not believe the evidence of her own eyeglasses. In Miss Bassett's garden she saw a tall girl, "dressed," as she put it, "like an actress," her delicate dress trailing upon the grass, a white lace scarf about her head and shoulders, roses in that scarf, roses at her waist.
"Good heavens!" she exclaimed: "is Belinda Bassett giving a party, without so much as mentioning it to me?"
Then she issued another mandate.
"Dobson," she said, "drive faster, and drive me to Miss Bassett's."
Miss Belinda came out to the gate to meet her, quaking inwardly. Octavia simply turned slightly where she stood, and looked at her ladyship, without any pretence of concealing her curiosity.
Lady Theobald bent forward in her landau.
"Belinda," she said, "how do you do? I did not know you intended to introduce garden-parties into Slowbridge."