scarcely a gentleman at all.  The next moment she blushed at her own vanity.  Next she was seized with a sense of the great indelicacy and unpardonable impropriety of letting her mind run at all upon a person of the other sex; and shaking her lovely shoulders, as much as to say, “Away idle thoughts,” she nestled and fitted with marvelous suppleness into a corner of the carriage, and sank into a sweet sleep, with a red cheek, two wet eyelashes, and a half-smile of the most heavenly character imaginable.  And so she glided along till, at five in the afternoon, the carriage turned in at Mr. Bazalgette’s gates.  Lucy lifted her eyes, and there was quite a little group standing on the steps to receive her, and waving welcome to the universal pet.  There was Mr. Bazalgette, Mrs. Bazalgette, and two servants, and a little in the rear a tall stranger of gentleman-like appearance.

The two ladies embraced one another so rapidly yet so smoothly, and so dovetailed and blended, that they might be said to flow together, and make one in all but color, like the Saone and the Rhone.  After half a dozen kisses given and returned with a spirit and rapidity from which, if we male spectators of these ardent encounters were wise, we might slyly learn a lesson, Aunt Bazalgette suddenly darted her mouth at Lucy’s ear, and whispered a few words with an animation that struck everybody present.  Lucy smiled in reply.  After “the meeting of the muslins,” Mr. Bazalgette shook hands warmly, and at last Lucy was introduced to his friend Mr. Hardie, who expressed in courteous terms his hopes that her journey had been a pleasant one.

The animated words Mrs. Bazalgette whispered into Lucy’s ear at that moment of burning affection were as follows: 

“You have had it washed!”

Lucy (unpacking her things in her bedroom).  “Who is Mr. Hardie, dear?”

“What! don’t you know?  Mr. Hardie is the great banker.”

“Only a banker?  I should have taken him for something far more distinguished.  His manner is good.  There is a suavity without feebleness or smallness.”

Mrs. Bazalgette’s eye flashed, but she answered with apparent nonchalance:  “I am glad you like him; you will take him off my hands now and then.  He must not be neglected; Bazalgette would murder us. Apropos, remind me to ask him to tell you Mr. Hardie’s story, and how he comes to be looked up to like a prince in this part of the world, though he is only a banker, with only ten thousand a year.”

“You make me quite curious, aunt.  Cannot you tell me?”

“Me?  Oh, dear, no!  Paper currency, foreign loans, government securities, gold mines, ten per cents, Mr. Peel, and why one breaks and another doesn’t! all that is quite beyond me.  Bazalgette is your man.  I had no idea your mousseline-delame would have washed so well.  Why, it looks just out of the shop; it—­” Come away, reader, for Heaven’s sake!

CHAPTER XI.