The girl was not dull, but perhaps her small experience of life, and her generally naive habit of mind, obscured to her what to the more practised was so obvious.
"Do you mean," said May, diffidently, "that she planned it out of kindness to Miss Bride?
Of course I know that she likes Miss Bride very much.

Perhaps she thought there would never be a better opportunity." "It might be so," replied the other, absently.
"Miss Bride is very nice, and very clever," pursued May, sounding the words on the thinnest possible note.

"But one didn't think of her as very likely to marry." "No; it seemed improbable." There was a pause.

As if turning to quite another subject, Mrs.Toplady remarked: "You will have visitors at Rivenoak next week.

Sir William Amys is to be there for a day or two, and Lord Dymchurch--" "Lord Dymchurch ?" The girl threw off her air of cold concentration, and shone triumphantly.
"Does it surprise you, May ?" "Oh, I hadn't thought of it--I didn't know my aunt had invited him--" "The wonder is that Lord Dymchurch should have accepted," said Mrs.
Toplady, with a very mature archness.