Sophy laughed.  A certain yearning for personal beauty was a curious part of her character, and she would have been ashamed to own the pleasure those few words had given her, or how much serenity and forbearance they were worth; and her good-humour was put to the proof that evening, for grandmamma had a tea-party, bent on extracting the full description of the great Algernon Greenaway Cavendish Dusautoy, Esquire.  Lucy’s first sight was less at her ease.  Elizabeth Osborn, with whom she kept up a fitful intimacy, summoned her mysteriously into her garden, to show her a peep-hole through a little dusty window in the tool-house, whence could be descried the vicarage garden, and Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, as, with a cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets,

    ‘Stately stept he east the wa’, and stately stept he west.’

Lucy was so much amused, that she could not help reporting it at home, where Gilbert forgot his sorrows, in building up a mischievous romance in honour of the hole in the ‘sweet and lovely wall.’

But the parents’ feud did not seem likely to hold out.  A hundred thousand pounds on one side of the wall, and three single daughters on the other, Mrs. Osborn was not the woman to trust to the ’wall’s hole;’ and so Mr. Dusautoy’s enemy laid down her colours; and he was too kind-hearted to trace her sudden politeness to the source.

Mr. Dusautoy acceded to the scheme devised by his wife, and measures were at once taken for engaging the curate.  When Albinia went to talk the matter over at the parsonage, Lucy accompanied her; but the object of her curiosity was not in the room; and when she had heard that he was fond of drawing, and that his horses were to be kept at the King’s Head stables, the conversation drifted away, and she grew restless, and begged Mrs. Dusautoy to allow her to replenish the faded bouquets on the table.  No sooner was she in the garden, than Mrs. Dusautoy put on an arch look, and lowering her voice, said,

‘Oh! it is such fun!  He does despise us so immensely.’

‘Despise—­you?’

’He is a good, boy, faithful to his training.  Now his poor mother’s axioms were, that the English are vulgar, country English more vulgar, Fanny Dusautoy the most vulgar!  I wish we always as heartily accepted what we are taught.’

‘He must be intolerable.’

’No, he is very condescending and patronizing to the savages.  He really is fond of his uncle; and John is so much hurt it I notice his peculiarities, that I have been dying to have my laugh out.’

‘Can Mr. Dusautoy bear with pretension?’

’It is not pretension, only calm faith in the lessons of his youth.  Look,’ she added, becoming less personal at Lucy’s re-entrance, and pointing to a small highly-varnished oil-painting of a red terra cotta vase, holding a rose, a rhododendron before it, and half a water-melon grinning behind, newly severed by a knife.