'Grace!—Grace Nugent!—put down your pencil, Grace, this minute, and come here!'
Miss Nugent obeyed with her usual alacrity; and the moment she entered the room, Lady Clonbrony, fixing her eyes full upon her, said—
'There's your cousin Colambre tells me his affections are engaged.'
'Yes, to Miss Broadhurst, no doubt,' said Miss Nugent, smiling, with a simplicity and openness of countenance which assured Lady Clonbrony that all was safe in that quarter: a suspicion which had darted into her mind was dispelled.
'No doubt. Ay, do you hear that NO DOUBT, Colambre?—Grace, you see, has no doubt; nobody has any doubt but yourself, Colambre.'
'And are your affections engaged, and not to Miss Broadhurst?' said Miss Nugent, approaching Lord Colambre.
'There now! you see how you surprise and disappoint everybody, Colambre.'
'I am sorry that Miss Nugent should be disappointed,' said Lord Colambre.
'But because I am disappointed, pray do not call me Miss Nugent, or turn away from me, as if you were displeased.'
'It must, then, be some Cambridgeshire lady,' said Lady Clonbrony. 'I am sure I am very sorry he ever went to Cambridge,—Oxford I advised: one of the Miss Berryls, I presume, who have nothing. I'll have nothing more to do with those Berryls—there was the reason of the son's vast intimacy. Grace, you may give up all thoughts of Sir Arthur.'