What an amazing business! Now at last one would see what Oliver
was made of!
Lady Lucy summoned all her dignity, expounded her view, and entirely
declined to be laughed or rated out of it. For Elizabeth Niton, her wig
much awry, her old eyes and cheeks blazing, took up the cause of Diana
with alternate sarcasm and eloquence. As for the social
disrepute--stuff! All that was wanting to such a beautiful creature as
Diana Mallory was a story and a scandal. Positively she would be the
rage, and Oliver's fortune was made.
Lady Lucy sat in pale endurance, throwing in an occasional protest, not
budging by one inch--and no doubt reminding herself from time to time,
in the intervals of her old friend's attacks, of the letter she had just
despatched to Beechcote--until, at last, Lady Niton, having worked
herself up into a fine frenzy to no purpose at all, thought it was time
to depart.
"Well, my dear," she said, leaning on her stick, the queerest rag-bag of
a figure--crooked wig, rusty black dress, and an unspeakable
bonnet--"you are a saint, of course, and I am a quarrelsome old sinner;
I like society, and you, I believe, regard it as a grove of barren
fig-trees.
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