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390 "Seen her! Oh yes, of course I have seen her. Did she not send for me? and in that case it was not on the cards that I should disobey her."

"And what did she say?"

"How green you are, Mark; and not only green, but impolite also, to make me repeat the story of my own disgrace. Of course she told me that she did not intend that I should marry my lord, her son; and of course I said that under those circumstances I should not think of doing such a thing."

"Lucy, I can not understand you," said Fanny, very gravely. "I am sometimes inclined to doubt whether you have any deep feeling in the matter or not. If you have, how can you bring yourself to joke about it?"

"Well, it is singular; and sometimes I doubt myself whether I have. I ought to be pale, ought I not? and very thin, and to go mad by degrees? I have not the least intention of doing any thing of the kind, and, therefore, the matter is not worth any farther notice."

"But was she civil to you, Lucy?" asked Mark; "civil in her manner, you know?"

"Oh, uncommonly so. You will hardly believe it, but she actually asked me to dine. She always does, you know, when she wants to show her good-humor. If you'd broken your leg, and she wished to commiserate you, she'd ask you to dinner."

"I suppose she meant to be kind," said Fanny, who was not disposed to give up her old friend, though she was quite ready to fight Lucy's battle, if there were any occasion for a battle to be fought.

"Lucy is so perverse," said Mark, "that it is impossible to learn from her what really has taken place."

"Upon my word, then, you know it all as well as I can tell you. She asked me if Lord Lufton had made me an offer. I said yes. She asked next if I meant to accept it. Not without her approval, I said. And then she asked us all to dinner. That is exactly what took place, and I can not see that I have been perverse at all." After that she threw herself into a chair, and Mark and Fanny stood looking at each other.

"Mark," she said, after a while, "don't be unkind to me. I make as little of it as I can, for all our sakes. It is better so, Fanny, than that I should go about moaning like a