'The things she says?'
'That's what makes them so beautiful—that they are not spoiled by preparation. You could never think of them for her.' The girl smiled at this description of the dearest friend of her interlocutress, but she wondered a little what Lady Davenant would say to visitors about her if she should accept a refuge under her roof. Her speech was after all a flattering proof of confidence. 'She wishes it had been you—I happen to know that,' said the old woman.
'It had been me?'
'That Lionel had taken a fancy to.'
'I wouldn't have married him,' Laura rejoined, after a moment.
'Don't say that or you will make me think it won't be easy to help you. I shall depend upon you not to refuse anything so good.'
'I don't call him good. If he were good his wife would be better.'
'Very likely; and if you had married him he would be better, and that's more to the purpose. Lionel is as idiotic as a comic song, but you have cleverness for two.'
'And you have it for fifty, dear Lady Davenant. Never, never—I shall never marry a man I can't respect!' Laura Wing exclaimed.