CHAPTER X.
Richford was an easy drive from Brookfield, through lanes of elm and white hawthorn.
The ladies never acted so well as when they were in the presence of a fact which they acknowledged, but did not recognize.

Albeit constrained to admit that this was the first occasion of their ever being on their way to the dinner-table of a person of quality, they could refuse to look the admission in the face.

A peculiar lightness of heart beset them; for brooding ambition is richer in that first realizing step it takes, insignificant though it seem, than in any subsequent achievement.
I fear to say that the hearts of the ladies boiled, because visages so sedate, and voices so monotonously indifferent, would witness decidedly against me.

The common avoidance of any allusion to Richford testified to the direction of their thoughts; and the absence of a sign of exultation may be accepted as a proof of the magnitude of that happiness of which they might not exhibit a feature.

The effort to repress it must have cost them horrible pain.