Chapter 8 - Page 2

to wait twelve days for a letter."

"Very true," said Miss Belinda, "but"--

She broke off with rather a distressed shake of the head. Her simple
ideas of economy and quiet living were frequently upset in these times.
She had begun to regard her niece with a slight feeling of awe; and yet
Octavia had not been doing any thing at all remarkable in her own eyes,
and considered her life pretty dull.

If the elder Miss Bassett, her parents and grandparents, had not been so
thoroughly well known, and so universally respected; if their social
position had not been so firmly established, and their quiet lives not
quite so highly respectable,--there is an awful possibility that
Slowbridge might even have gone so far as not to ask Octavia out to tea
at all. But even Lady Theobald felt that it would not do to slight
Belinda Bassett's niece and guest. To omit the customary state teas
would have been to crush innocent Miss Belinda at a blow, and place
her--through the medium of this young lady, who alone deserved
condemnation--beyond the pale of all social law.

"It is only to be regretted," said her ladyship, "that Belinda Bassett
has not arranged things better. Relatives of such an order are certainly
to be deplored."

In secret Lucia felt much soft-hearted sympathy for both Miss Bassett and
her guest. She could not help wondering how Miss Belinda became
responsible for the calamity which had fallen upon her. It really did not
seem probable that she had been previously consulted as to the kind of
niece she desired, or that she had, in a distinct manner, evinced a
preference for a niece of this description.

"Perhaps, dear grandmamma," the girl ventured, "it is because Miss
Octavia Bassett is so young that"--

"May I ask," inquired Lady Theobald, in fell tones, "how old you are?"

"I was nineteen in--in December."

"Miss Octavia Bassett," said her ladyship, "was nineteen last October,
and it is now June. I have not yet found it necessary to apologize for
you on the score of youth."

But it was her ladyship who took the initiative, and set an evening for
entertaining Miss Belinda and her niece, in company with several other
ladies, with the best bohea, thin bread and butter, plum-cake, and
various other delicacies.

"What do they do at such places?" asked Octavia. "Half-past five is
pretty early."

"We spend some time at the tea-table, my dear," explained Miss Belinda.
"And afterward we--we converse. A few of us play whist. I do not. I feel
as if I were not clever enough, and I get flurried too easily by--by