"Yes? and what do you think of her?" asked Mrs. Harrowby with a sharp glance.
"I scarcely know: I have hardly seen her as yet," he answered.
"Did she say or do anything very extraordinary to-day?" asked Adelaide with such an air of contemptuous curiosity as seemed to him insufferably insolent.
"No, nothing. Is she in the habit of saying or doing extraordinary things?" he answered back, arching his eyebrows and speaking in a well-affected tone of sincere inquiry.
"At times she is more like a maniac than a sane person," said Adelaide, breaking her bread with deliberation. "What can you expect from such a parentage and education as hers?"
Edgar looked down and smiled satirically. "Poor Pepita's sins lie heavy on your mind," he answered.
"Yes, I believe in race," was her reply.
"Mother," then said Edgar after a short silence, "why do you not have Miss Dundas to dine here with Adelaide? It would be more amusing to her, for it must be dull"—turning to their guest and speaking amiably, considerately—"I am afraid very dull—to be so often quite alone with us."
He did not add what he thought, that it was almost indelicate in her to be here so often. He was out of humor with her to-day.
"She is such an uncertain girl we never know how she may be. I had her to stay here once, and I do not want to repeat the experiment," was Mrs. Harrowby's answer.