Lucia glanced around again—this time rather stealthily—at Lady Theobald. Then she glanced back at Octavia.
"But it isn't," she said, in an undertone.
Octavia began to laugh. They were on a new and familiar footing from that moment.
"I said 'it might,'" she answered.
She was not afraid, any longer, of finding the evening stupid. If there were no young men, there was at least a young woman who was in sympathy with her. She said,—
"I hope that I shall behave myself pretty well, and do the things I am expected to do."
"Oh!" said Lucia, with a rather alarmed expression, "I hope so. I—I am afraid you would not be comfortable if you didn't."
Octavia opened her eyes, as she often did at Miss Belinda's remarks, and then suddenly she began to laugh again.
"What would they do?" she said disrespectfully. "Would they turn me out, without giving me any tea?"
Lucia looked still more frightened.