him, and hoped to let the conversation drop, but Sophy answered her
sister, and, at last, when it came to something about what Jane heard
from Mrs. Osborn's Susan, Albinia gently whispered, 'I do not think
this entertains your papa, my dear,' and silence sank upon them all.

Albinia's next venture was to ask about that which had been her
Sunday pleasure from childhood, and she turned to Sophy, and said, 'I
suppose you have not begun to teach at the school yet!'

Sophy's great eyes expanded, and Lucy said, 'Oh dear mamma! nobody
does that but Genevieve Durant and the monitors. Miss Wolte did till
Mr. Dusautoy came, but she does not approve of him.'

'Lucy, you do not know what you are saying,' said Mr. Kendal, and
again there was an annihilating silence, which Albinia did not
attempt to disturb.

At church time, she met the young ladies in the hall, in pink bonnets
and sea-green mantillas over the lilac silks, all evidently put on
for the first time in her honour, an honour of which she felt herself
the less deserving, as, sensible that this was no case for bridal
display, she wore a quiet dark silk, a Cashmere shawl, and plain
straw bonnet, trimmed with white.

With manifest wish for reciprocity, Lucy fell into transports over
the shawl, but gaining nothing by this, Sophy asked if she did not
like the mantillas? Albinia could only make civility compatible with
truth by saying that the colour was pretty, but where was Gilbert?
He was on a stool before the dining-room fire, looking piteous, and
pronouncing his tooth far too bad for going to church, and she had