‘Well!’ cried Gilbert, ’I hoped Aunt Maria had left off coming down upon us.’

‘O, mamma!’ exclaimed Lucy, ‘you never sent your love to grandmamma.’

‘Depend upon it she was waiting for that,’ said Gilbert.

I’m sure I wish I had known it,’ said Albinia, not in the most judicious manner.  ‘Half-past eleven!’

’Aunt Maria says she can’t think how you can find time for church when you can’t see visitors in the morning,’ said Lucy.  ’And oh! dear mamma, grandmamma says gravy soup was enough to throw Gilbert into a fever.’

‘At any rate, it did not,’ said Albinia.

’Oh! and, dear mamma, Mrs. Osborn is so hurt that you called on Mrs. Dusautoy before returning her visit; and Aunt Maria says if you don’t call to-day you will never get over it, and she says that—­’

‘What business has Mrs. Osborn to ask whom I called on?’ exclaimed Albinia, impatiently.

‘Because Mrs. Osborn is the leading lady in the town,’ said Lucy.  ’She told Miss Goldsmith that she had no notion of not being respected.’

’And she can’t bear the Dusautoys.  She left off subscribing to anything when they came; and he behaved very ill to the Admiral and everybody at a vestry-meeting.’

’I shall ask your papa before I am in any hurry to call on the Osborns!’ cried Albinia.  ’I have no desire to be intimate with people who treat their clergyman in that way.’

‘But Mrs. Osborn is quite the leader!’ exclaimed Lucy.  They keep the best society here.  So many families in the county come and call on them.’

‘Very likely—­’

’Ah!  Mrs. Osborn told Aunt Maria that as the Nugents called on you, and you had such connexions, she supposed you would be high.  But you wont make me separate from Lizzie, will you?  I suppose Miss Nugent is a fashionable young lady.’

’Miss Nugent is five years old.  Don’t let us have any more of this nonsense.’

‘But you wont part me from Lizzie Osborn,’ said Lucy, hanging her head pathetically on one side.

’I shall talk to your father.  He said, the other day, he did not wish you to be so much with her.’

Lucy melted into tears, and Albinia was conscious of having been first indiscreet and then sharp, hurt at the comments, feeling injured by Lucy’s evident habit of reporting whatever she said, and at the failure of the attempt to please Mrs. Meadows.  She was so uneasy about the Osborn question, that she waylaid Mr. Kendal on his return from riding, and laid it before him.

‘My dear Albinia,’ he said, as if he would fain have avoided the appeal, ’you must manage your own visiting affairs your own way.  I do not wish to offend my neighbours, nor would I desire to be very intimate with any one.  I suppose you must pay them ordinary civility, and you know what that amounts to.  As to the leadership in society here, she is a noisy woman, full of pretension, and thus always arrogates the distinction to herself.  Your claims will establish themselves.’