"So am I. But we were talking about your deafness: you must have it seen to. Young people nowadays! They can't hear, they can't see, they have no teeth—"
"Miss Tomalin, I noticed, has excellent teeth."
"She takes after me in that. Her eyes, too, are good enough, but she has worn them out already. She'll have to stop that reading; I am not going to have her blind at thirty. She didn't seem to be deaf, did she?"
"No more than I am, Lady Ogram."
"You are not deaf? Then why did you say you were?"
"It was you, not I, that said so," answered Constance, with a laugh.
"And what do you think of her?" asked Lady Ogram sharply.
"I think her interesting," was Miss Bride's reply, the word bearing a sense to her own thought not quite identical with that which it conveyed to the hearer.
"So do I. She's very young, but none the worse for that. You think her interesting. So do I."
Constance noticed that Lady Ogram's talk to-day had more of the characteristics of old age than ordinarily, as though, in her great satisfaction, the mind relaxed and the tongue inclined to babble. Though May was absent less than a quarter of an hour, the old lady waxed impatient.