"I hope it wasn't rude?" fluttered the poor little rose-colored sultana.
"Not at all," answered Lady Throckmorton. "Only innocent. But I can tell you all about Priscilla in a dozen words. Priscilla is a modern Sappho. Priscilla is an elderly young lady, who never was a girl—Priscilla is my poor Denis Oglethorpe's fiancee."
"Oh!" said Theodora.
Her august relative drew her rich silk skirts a little farther away from the heat of the fire, and frowned slightly; but not at Theodora—at Priscilla, in her character of fiancee.
"Yes," she went on. "And I think you would agree with me in saying poor Denis Oglethorpe, if you could see Priscilla."
"Is she ugly?" asked Theo, concisely.
"No," sharply. "I wish she was; but at twenty-two she is elderly, as I said just now—and she never was anything else. She was elderly when they were engaged, five years ago."
"But why—why didn't they get married five years ago, if they were engaged?"
"Because they were too poor," Lady Throckmorton explained; "because Denis was only a poor young journalist, scribbling night and day, and scarcely earning his bread and butter."
"Is he poor now?" ventured Theo again.