Poor Lucy! She knew quite as well as did Lord Fawn that Burke had been a House of Commons orator; but in her impatience, and from absence of the habit of argument, she omitted to explain that she was talking about the speeches of the day.
Lord Fawn held up his hands, and put his head a little on one side.
"My dear Lucy," said Lady Fawn, "you are showing your ignorance.
Where do you suppose that Mr.Burke's speeches were made ?" "Of course I know they were made in Parliament," said Lucy, almost in tears.
"If Miss Morris means that Burke's greatest efforts were not made in Parliament,--that his speech to the electors of Bristol, for instance, and his opening address on the trial of Warren Hastings, were, upon the whole, superior to--" "I didn't mean anything at all," said Lucy.
"Lord Fawn is trying to help you, my dear," said Lady Fawn.
"I don't want to be helped," said Lucy.

"I only mean that I thought Mr.Greystock's speech as good as it could possibly be.

There wasn't a word in it that didn't seem to me to be just what it ought to be.

I do think that they are ill-treating that poor Indian prince, and I am very glad that somebody has had the courage to get up and say so." No doubt it would have been better that Lucy should have held her tongue.

Had she simply been upholding against an opponent a political speaker whose speech she had read with pleasure, she might have held her own in the argument against the whole Fawn family.