Pen explained it was not of her he spoke, but of Ophelia of the play.

"Oh, indeed; if no offence was meant, none was taken: but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him--not that glass of punch." Pen next tried her on Kotzebue.

"Kotzebue?
who was he ?"--"The author of the play in which she had been performing so admirably." "She did not know that--the man's name at the beginning of the book was Thompson," she said.

Pen laughed at her adorable simplicity.

He told her of the melancholy fate of the author of the play, and how Sand had killed him.