You should have seen Bertha look vacant! But it's no joke, you know--if she stays here all the autumn she'll spoil everything, and Maria Van Osburgh will simply exult." At this affecting vision Mrs.Trenor's voice trembled with self-pity.
"Oh, Judy--as if any one were ever bored at Bellomont!" Miss Bart tactfully protested.

"You know perfectly well that, if Mrs.Van Osburgh were to get all the right people and leave you with all the wrong ones, you'd manage to make things go off, and she wouldn't." Such an assurance would usually have restored Mrs.Trenor's complacency; but on this occasion it did not chase the cloud from her brow.
"It isn't only Lady Cressida," she lamented.

"Everything has gone wrong this week.

I can see that Bertha Dorset is furious with me." "Furious with you?
Why ?" "Because I told her that Lawrence Selden was coming; but he wouldn't, after all, and she's quite unreasonable enough to think it's my fault." Miss Bart put down her pen and sat absently gazing at the note she had begun.
"I thought that was all over," she said.
"So it is, on his side.

And of course Bertha has been idle since.