Chapter 12

AN INVITATION.

In the mean time Mr. Burmistone was improving his opportunities within
doors. He had listened to the music with the most serious attention; and
on its conclusion he had turned to Mrs. Burnham, and made himself very
agreeable indeed. At length, however, he arose, and sauntered across the
room to a table at which Lucia Gaston chanced to be standing alone,
having just been deserted by a young lady whose mamma had summoned her.
She wore, Mr. Burmistone regretted to see, as he advanced, a troubled and
anxious expression; the truth being that she had a moment before remarked
the exit of Miss Belinda's niece and her companion. It happened oddly
that Mr. Burmistone's first words touched upon the subject of her
thought. He began quite abruptly with it.

"It seems to me," he said, "that Miss Octavia Bassett"--

Lucia stopped him with a courage which surprised herself.

"Oh, if you please," she implored, "don't say any thing unkind about
her!"

Mr. Burmistone looked down into her soft eyes with a good deal of
feeling.

"I was not going to say any thing unkind," he answered. "Why should I?"

"Everybody seems to find a reason for speaking severely of her," Lucia
faltered. "I have heard so many unkind things tonight, that I am quite
unhappy. I am sure--I am _sure_ she is very candid and simple."

"Yes," answered Mr. Burmistone, "I am sure she is very candid and
simple."

"Why should we expect her to be exactly like ourselves?" Lucia went on.
"How can we be sure that our way is better than any other? Why should
they be angry because her dress is so expensive and pretty? Indeed, I
only wish I had such a dress. It is a thousand times prettier than any we
ever wear. Look around the room, and see if it is not. And as to her not
having learned to play on the piano, or to speak French--why should she
be obliged to do things she feels she would not be clever at? I am not
clever, and have been a sort of slave all my life, and have been scolded
and blamed for what I could not help at all, until I have felt as if I
must be a criminal. How happy she must have been to be let alone!"

She had clasped her little hands, and, though she spoke in a low
voice, was quite impassioned in an unconscious way. Her brief girlish
life had not been a very happy one, as may be easily imagined; and a
glimpse of the liberty for which she had suffered roused her to a
sense of her own wrongs.

"We are all cut out after the same pattern," she said. "We learn the same
things, and wear the same dresses, one might say. What Lydia Egerton has
been taught, I have