“Dear me—dear me! how things do wear out!” sighed Mrs Alleyne; and, raising her eyes, she saw her face reflected in a little square glass hanging upon the wall—“even ourselves,” she added, sadly.
Just then Lucy came in hurriedly.
“Oh, mamma,” she cried, “I’m sure I don’t know what we shall do. The more I look up things, the worse they seem. It is dreadful; it is horrible. I shall blush for shame.”
“And why, may I ask?” said Mrs Alleyne, sternly.
“Because people will do nothing but spy out the poverty of the land. Moray has no sense at all, or he would never have been so foolish as to ask them.”
“Your brother had his own good reasons for asking Sir John Day, his brother, and his daughter, and I beg that you will not speak in that disrespectful way of your brother’s plans.”
“But you don’t see, mamma.”
“I see everything, my child,” said Mrs Alleyne, stiffly.
“But you don’t think how awkward it will be.”
“Yes, I have thought of all that.”