"Oh, yes, very fortunate indeed!" added Miss Grace. Mrs. Dorothea bowed again.
"How sorry we were you could not come to us last night," said Miss Salter, "we had such a select party, just what you would have liked."
"Yes, just what you would have liked," echoed Miss Grace.
"I hope we shall be more fortunate the next time," said Miss Salter. "We shall have a great many of those agreeable select parties just now. Our particular friend, Lady Flamborough, you see, and our particular friend, Lady Whaleworthy, and our particular friend, Lady Shawbridge, and all that pleasant set being here just now, naturally induces one to see a great deal of company. Then there are such delightful young men here at present, and that you know always makes parties pleasant, there's our friend, Sir William Orm, such an elegant fashionable young man."
"And Sir James Lindsey," observed Miss Grace, "an old baronet, with fifteen thousand a-year."
"Yes," said Miss Salter, "such an agreeable good tempered little man, so affable and unassuming. And there is General Powel too, in short we quite abound in nice young men. And I hope," added Miss Salter, with an air of great friendship, "that we shall soon and often have the pleasure of seeing you, Mrs. Arden."
"You are very obliging," replied Mrs. Dorothea, bowing gravely, "but my arrangements will for some considerable time be controlled entirely by those of my sister, Lady Arden, and her family, with whom I shall consider myself engaged, either at home or abroad, every day during their stay."
"So you expect Lady Arden," said Miss Salter, with well affected surprise. "Dear me, I'm sure we should be most happy to pay attention to any friend of yours."
"You are very obliging," observed Mrs. Dorothea, with if possible increasing stiffness, "but Lady Arden does not mean to extend her acquaintance."
The discomforted Misses Salter finding lingering and last words useless, at length took their departure.