"I have discovered a fault in you, Miss Arnold, at last; though every body here seems to think it impossible you should have one. May I tell you of it?"
"Oh! if you once begin with my faults, I am afraid you will never have done. I know the length of the score that might be summed up against me, though others are so good-natured as to forget it. Yes, indeed, I shall be much obliged to you."
"Don't you think it is the duty of all to exert themselves in a family party, to make conversation circulate in an agreeable manner?"
"To be sure, I do—and" ... how well you perform that duty, she was prompted to say, but she did not. She hesitated a little, and then added—"And, perhaps, you think I do not do that so much as I ought to do."
"Precisely. You will not be angry. No, you can not be angry. You never are. The most trying and provoking things, I observe, can not ruffle you. So I will venture to say, that I think you don't play fair by me. We are both here chiefly to make ourselves agreeable, I believe; and I sometimes wish I had a little more assistance in that duty from one who, I am sure, could perform it admirably, if she so pleased."
Lettice shook her head. Then she said, with her usual simplicity, "I used to talk more before you came."
"Did you? But that's not quite generous, is it, to throw the whole burden upon me now I am come, instead of sharing it? Why will you not talk now?"
"Simply, because I can't. Oh, Mr. St. Leger! the talk is so different since you came here, and I feel my own incapacity so sadly—my own ignorance so forcibly—I should say so painfully; but that, indeed, is not my own fault, and that takes the worst pain, you know, out of things."
"Ignorant!" he said: "of what?"
"Of all these things you talk about. I used to pick up a little from the newspapers, but now I have done reading them I seem literally to know nothing."