"I declare you are better than any peerage!" she said to him presently, when he had given her a short biography, first of Lord Cathedine, who was sitting opposite, then of various other members of the company. "I should like to tie you to my fan when I go out to dinner."
"Would you?" said the young man, drily. "Oh! you will soon know all you want to know."
"How are poor little people from Yorkshire to find their way about in this big world? You are all so dreadfully absorbed in each other. In the first place, you all marry each other."
"Do we?—though I don't quite understand who 'we' means. Well, one must marry somebody, I suppose, and cousins are less trouble than other people."
Involuntarily, the young man's eyes travelled along the table to a fair girl on the opposite side, dazzlingly dressed in black. She was wielding a large fan of black feathers, which threw both hair and complexion into amazing relief; and she seemed to be amusing herself in a nervous, spasmodic way with Sir Frank Leven. Letty noticed his glance.
"Oh! you have not earned your testimonial yet, not by any manner of means," she said. "That is Lady Madeleine Penley, isn't it? Is she a relation of Mrs. Allison's?"
"She is a cousin. That is her mother, Lady Kent, sitting beside poor Ancoats. Such an old character! By the end of dinner she will have got to the bottom of Ancoats, or know the reason why."
"Is Lord Ancoats such a mystery?" said Letty, running an inquisitive eye over the black front, sharp nose, and gorgeously bejewelled neck of a somewhat noisy and forbidding old lady sitting on the right hand of the host.
Young Naseby's expression in answer rather piqued her. There was a quick flash of something that was instantly suppressed, and the youth said composedly,
"Oh! we are all mysteries for Lady Kent."