The afternoon post brought letters that furnished some excitement.  Mr. Hardie announced his return, and Captain Kenealy accepted an invitation that had been sent to him two days before.  But this was not all.  Mrs. Bazalgette, with something between a laugh and a crow, handed Lucy a letter from Mr. Fountain, in which that diplomatic gentleman availed himself of her kind invitation, and with elephantine playfulness proposed, as he could not stay a month with her, to be permitted to bring a friend with him for a fortnight.  This friend had unfortunately missed her through absence from his country-house at the period of her visit to Font Abbey, and had so constantly regretted his ill fortune that he (Fountain) had been induced to make this attempt to repair the calamity.  His friend’s name was Talboys; he was a gentleman of lineage, and in his numerous travels had made a collection of foreign costumes which were really worth inspecting, and, if agreeable to Mrs. Bazalgette, he should send them on before by wagon, for no carriage would hold them.

Lucy colored on reading this letter, for it repeated a falsehood that had already made her blush.  The next moment, remembering how very keenly her aunt must be eying her, and reading her, she looked straight before her, and said coldly, “Uncle Fountain ought to be welcome here for his courtesy to you at Font Abbey, but I think he takes rather a liberty in proposing a stranger to you.”

“Rather a liberty?  Say a very great liberty.”

“Well, then, aunt, why not write back that any friend of his would be welcome, but that the house is full?  You have only room for Uncle Fountain.”

“But that is not true, Lucy,” said Mrs. Bazalgette, with sudden dignity.

Lucy was staggered and abashed at this novel objection; recovering, she whined humbly, “but it is very nearly true.”

It was plain Lucy did not want Mr. Talboys to visit them.  This decided Mrs. Bazalgette to let his dresses and him come.  He would only be a foil to Mr. Hardie, and perhaps bring him on faster.  Her decision once made on the above grounds, she conveyed it in characteristic colors.  “No, my love; where I give my affection, there I give my confidence.  I have your word not to encourage this gentleman’s addresses, so why hurt your uncle’s feelings by closing my door to his friend?  It would be an ill compliment to you as well as to Mr. Fountain; he shall come.”

Her postscript to Mr. Fountain ran thus: 

“Your friend would have been welcome independently of the foreign costumes; but as I am a very candid little woman, I may as well tell you that, now you have excited my curiosity, he will be a great deal more welcome with them than without them.”

And here I own that I, the simpleminded, should never have known all that was signified in these words but for the comment of John Fountain, Esq.

“It is all right, Talboys,” said he.  “My bait has taken.  You must pack up these gimcracks at once and send them off, or she’ll smile like a marble Satan in your face, and stick you full of pins and needles.”