"No, they have not; there are very good people, and I hate them," said Lady Jane, swinging her mallet slowly like a pendulum, and gazing with her dark deep eyes full into her companion's face.
"Hate the good people!" exclaimed Beatrix; "then how do you feel towards the bad?"
"There are some whose badness suits me, and I like them; there are others whose badness does not, and them I hate as much as the good almost."
Trixie was puzzled; but she concluded that Lady Jane was in one of her odd moods, and venting her ill temper in those shocking eruptions of levity.
"How old are you, Beatrix?"
"Nineteen."
"Ha! and I am five-and-twenty—six years. There is a great deal learned in those six years. I don't recollect what I was like when I was nineteen."
She did not sigh; Lady Jane was not given to sighing, but her face looked sad and sullen.
"It all came of my having no friend," she said, abruptly. "Not one. That stupid old woman might have been one, but she would not. I had no one—it was fate; and here I am, such as I am, and I don't blame myself or anything. But I wish I had one true friend."
"I am sure, Lady Jane, you must have many friends," said Beatrix.