She looked very sagacious.
“Ah! Frank, you did not say anything; but your looks betrayed you. So that’s the reason why the report of the curate’s marriage affected you so, is it? But you needn’t blush, my dear boy! You need not blush! I will not tell tales out of school; so you may set your mind at rest. It is not, however, as you think, Frank. Cheer up; and good-bye, my dear boy. I must be trotting off now, or my poor blind woman will think I’m never coming to read to her.”
And off she went, leaving me much happier than old Shuffler had done.
Confound him! What did he mean, with his cock-and-a-bull story?
On reaching Lady Dasher’s house, however, the house-agent’s rumour was, to my great distress, confirmed; and, that in the most authoritative manner.
It must be true then, in spite of Miss Pimpernell’s denial!
My lady was in one of her most morbid and melancholy moods, too, which did not help to mend matters.
I praised her fuchsias on entering; but even this homage to her favourite hobby failed to rouse her.
She had heard that Mrs Clyde had some of the most beautiful pelargonia; and what were her paltry flowers in comparison?
Alas! she was poor, and could only afford a few miserable fuchsias to decorate her drawing-room—or rather the better to exhibit its poverty!