Gertrude paused in her walk, looking at her. “That would not be pleasant,” she answered. “She wants privacy and pleasure together.”
Robert Acton began to laugh again. “My dear cousin, what a picture!”
Charlotte had fixed her serious eyes upon her sister; she wondered whence she had suddenly derived these strange notions. Mr. Wentworth also observed his younger daughter.
“I don’t know what her manner of life may have been,” he said; “but she certainly never can have enjoyed a more refined and salubrious home.”
Gertrude stood there looking at them all. “She is the wife of a Prince,” she said.
“We are all princes here,” said Mr. Wentworth; “and I don’t know of any palace in this neighborhood that is to let.”
“Cousin William,” Robert Acton interposed, “do you want to do something handsome? Make them a present, for three months, of the little house over the way.”
“You are very generous with other people’s things!” cried his sister.
“Robert is very generous with his own things,” Mr. Wentworth observed dispassionately, and looking, in cold meditation, at his kinsman.
“Gertrude,” Lizzie went on, “I had an idea you were so fond of your new cousin.”