"Lady Lancaster's company?" asked Leonora.
"Why, yes, of course," said Mrs. West. "She has twenty guests—fine, fashionable people from London, and they are all very gay indeed. You shall see them all at dinner this evening. I will find you a peep-hole. It will be a fine sight for you."
"I dare say," said Leonora, speaking rather indistinctly, because she had two pins in her mouth and was fastening a clean linen collar around her neck.
"How coolly she takes things! I suppose that is the American way," thought Mrs. West. "But then of course she can have no idea what a brave sight it is to see the English nobility dining at a great country-house. She will be quite dazzled by the black coats and shining jewels and beautiful dresses. I don't suppose they have anything like it in her country," mused the good woman, whose ideas of America were so vague that she did not suppose it had advanced very far from the condition in which Columbus discovered it.
"I should not think," said her niece, breaking in upon these silent cogitations, "that Lady Lancaster, being so old—'one foot in the grave and the other on the brink,' as they say—would care about all that gay company around her. Does she lead such a life always?"
"Oh, no. It is only now and then she is so dissipated. But she must keep up the dignity of the Hall, you know, for the sake of Lord Lancaster. All this present gayety is in honor of his return."
"Has Lord Lancaster been abroad, then?" Leonora asked, carelessly.
"Why, my love, what a strange question!" said her aunt, staring.
"What is there strange about it, Aunt West?" asked the girl.
"Why, that you should ask me if Lord Lancaster has been abroad—as if any one should know better than yourself."