“Lady Randolph, is it me you are thinking of? What harm can it do me?” said Lucy, who had grown pale, but was puzzled and frightened, and did not quite understand why all this excitement should be.
“What harm, indeed!” cried Lady Randolph, “so long as you don’t mind it, my darling! She is the only one that has sense among us, Tom.”
“That is all very well,” Sir Tom said. “She is too young to understand; it is meant for an insult. There’s the harm of women getting their fingers into every pie. You can’t kick them. By Jove! isn’t there any other way that one can serve her out?”
“Sir Thomas,” said Lucy, “you laughed at me about it yourself.”
“So I did; I am ready to laugh at you, my dear little girl, any moment; but I should like to see another man do it,” he cried.
Lady Randolph looked at him in dismay. What could he mean?—to speak with such kindly familiarity, as if she were his cousin, at the least. (Though Lady Randolph professed to be a connection, yet this link was not even known to Sir Tom.) Would not the heiress be alarmed? would not she suspect and divine? She turned her eyes furtively toward Lucy, more troubled than before.
But Lucy took it all very calmly. She showed no consciousness of too much or too little in her new friend’s address. She smiled at him with grateful confidence, without even a blush. What was there to blush for? Then her face clouded over a little.
“Will it hurt the book? Will he get no money for it?” she said.
CHAPTER XXV.
A BAD RECEPTION.
Lucy rode to Hampstead that morning, Sir Thomas, to her great surprise, volunteering to go with her. He had some one in those regions whom he too wished to see, he said. Lucy was not sure whether she was most pleased or disconcerted by this companionship; but the ride was all the more agreeable. He was, as usual, very kind; friendly, and brotherly—or rather, as she thought, taking his own statement frankly, like an uncle, an elder, experienced, but altogether delightful friend, to whom she could say a great many things, which it would have been impossible to say to one near her own age and condition.