They went on talking eagerly of the improvements that might be made, and from thence came to other subjects—­Alethea herself, and the future plans.  At last William asked if Lily knew what made Jane look as deplorable as she had done for the last two days, and Lily was obliged to tell him, with the addition that Eleanor had begun to inform her of the real fact, but that she had stopped her by declaring that she had known it all from the first.  Just as they had mentioned her, Jane, attracted by the unusual sound of voices in Lady Emily’s room, came in, asking what they could be doing there.  Lily would scarcely have dared to reply, but William said in a grave, matter-of-fact way, ’We are thinking of having this room newly fitted up.’

‘For Alethea Weston?’ said Jane; ’how can you, Lily?  I should have thought, at least, it was no laughing matter.’

‘I advise you to follow Lily’s example and make the best of it,’ said William.

’I do, but it is another thing to stand laughing here.  I see one thing that I shall do—­I shall take away your picture and hang it in my room.’

‘We shall see,’ said William, following Lilias, who had left the room to hide her laughter.

To mystify Jane was the great amusement of the day; Reginald, finding Maurice possessed with the same notion, did more to maintain it than the others would have thought right, and Maurice reporting his speeches to Jane, she had not the least doubt that her idea was correct.  Lord Rotherwood came to dinner, and no sooner had he entered the drawing-room than Reginald, rejoicing in the absence of the parties concerned, informed him of the joke, much to his diversion, though rather to the discomfiture of the more prudent spectators, who might have wished it confined to themselves.

‘It has gone far enough,’ said Claude; ’she will say something she will repent if we do not take care.’

’I should like to reduce her to humble herself to ask an explanation from Marianne,’ said Lily.

‘And pray don’t spoil the joke before I have enjoyed it,’ said Lord Rotherwood.  ’My years of discretion are not such centuries of wisdom as those of that gentleman who looks as grim as his namesake the Emperor on a coin.’

The entrance of Eleanor and Jane here put an end to the conversation, which was not renewed till the evening, when the younger, or as Claude called it, the middle-aged part of the company were sitting on the lawn, leaving the drawing-room to the elder and more prudent, and the terrace to the wilder and more active.  Emily was talking of Mrs. Burnet’s visit of the day before, and her opinion of the Hetherington festivities.  ‘And what an interminable visit it was,’ said Jane; ’I thought they would never go!’

’People always inflict themselves in a most merciless manner when there is anything going on,’ said Emily.

‘I wonder if they guessed anything,’ said Lily.