"Being so seldom in town," she said, "it is not my wish to keep up an indiscriminate acquaintance. In the country you must know everybody, but in a place like London you can pick and choose."
This sentence was too long for Lady Ida, whose attention wandered.
"How do you do?" she said, nodding and smiling over Lilias' shoulder. "Ah, yes, to be sure, that is quite true. I suppose you are going to take Lilias to the ball everybody is talking of—oh, the ball, the Greek ambassador's?"
"Dear me, you have never heard of it, Margaret!" Miss Jean said.
"Oh, you must go! Lilias, you must insist upon going," Lady Ida cried, her eyes going beyond them to some new comers who hurried forward with effusive greetings. "You have got your tickets?" were the first words she addressed to them.
"Oh, so many thanks," said the new people. "We got them this morning. And I hear everybody is going. How kind of you to take so much trouble for us."
Miss Margaret, somewhat grimly, had moved away. Envy, and desire, and profound mortification were in her soul.
"If you cannot speak to the purpose, you might at least hold your tongue," she said to Jean, with unwonted bitterness.
Lilias followed them forlorn. She was dazzling in her young bloom. She was prettily dressed. Her sweet, wistful looks, a little scared and wondering, afraid of the crowd, which laughed and talked, and babbled about its pleasures, and took no notice of her, were enough to have touched any tender heart. And no doubt there were a number of sympathetic people about to whom Margaret and Jean would have been much more interesting than the majority of the chatterers, and who would have admired and flattered Lilias with the utmost delight. But there was nobody to bring them together. Lady Ida, in the midst of a crowd of her friends, was discussing in high excitement this great event in the fashionable world. The other people were meeting each other daily in one place or another. Our poor country friends, after the brave front they had put upon it at first, and their pretence of enjoying the beautiful sight—the flowers, the lights, the diamonds, the pretty people—began to feel it all insupportable. After a while, by tacit consent, they moved back towards the door.
"But the carriage will not be here for an hour yet, Margaret," Jean said.