“I did burn,” said Adelaide, “with shame, to see the mistress of a house forget what was due to her father’s guests.”

“There’s a slap on the cheek for me!  Mercy! how it burns!  No, I did not forget what was due to my father’s guests; on the contrary, I consider it due to them to save them, if I can, from the snares that I see set for them.  I have told you that I abhor all traps, whether for the poor simple mouse that comes to steal its bit of cheese, or for the dull elderly gentleman who falls asleep with a star on his breast.”

“This is one of the many kind and polite allusions for which I am indebted to your Ladyship,” said Adelaide haughtily; “but I trust the day will come when I shall be able to discharge what I owe you.”

And she quitted the room, followed by Lady Juliana, who could only make out that Lady Emily had been insolent, and that Adelaide was offended.  A pause followed.

“I see you think I am in the wrong, Mary; I can read that in the little reproachful glance you gave me just now.  Well, perhaps I am; but I own it chafes my spirit to sit and look on such a scene of iniquity.  Yes, iniquity I call it, for a woman to be in love with one man, and at the same time laying snares for another.  You may think, perhaps, that Adelaide has no heart to love anything; but she has a heart, such as it is, though it is much too fine for every-day use, and therefore it is kept locked up in marble casket, quite out of reach of you or I. But I’m mistaken if Frederick has not made himself master of it!  Not that I should blame her for that, if she would be honestly and downrightly in love with him.  But how despicable to see her, with her affections placed upon one man, at the same time lavishing all her attentions on another—­and that other, if he had been plain John Altamont, Esq., she would not have been commonly civil to!  And, apropos of civility—­I must tell you, if you mean to refuse your hero, you were too civil by half to him.  I observed you at dinner, you sat perfectly straight, and answered everything he said to you.”

“What could I do?” asked Mary, in some surprise.

“I’ll tell you what I would have done, and have thought the most honourable mode of proceeding; I should have turned my back upon him, and have merely thrown him a monosyllable now and then over my shoulder.”

“I could not be less than civil to him, and I am sure I was not more.”

“Civility is too much for a man one means to refuse.  You’ll never get rid of a stupid man by civility.  Whenever I had any reason to apprehend a lover, I thought it my duty to turn short upon him and give him a snarl at the outset, which rid me of him at once.  But I really begin to think I manage these matters better than anybody else—­’Where I love, I profess it:  where I hate, in every circumstance I dare proclaim it.’”

Mary tried to defend her sister, in the first place; but though her charity would not allow her to censure, her conscience whispered there was much to condemn; and she was relieved from what she felt a difficult task when the gentlemen began to drop in.