Lucy flushed a little, as she replied:

"Oh, no; the sixth place is for Miss McPherson."

"Miss McPherson! What possessed you to invite her? I detest her, with
her sharp tongue and prying ways. Why, she is positively rude at times,
and exasperates me so," Geraldine said, angrily; and her sister
rejoined:

"I know she is peculiar and outspoken, but at heart she is true as
steel, and I thought she would be very lonely taking her Thanksgiving
dinner alone. And then she will be glad to see you and inquire after her
brother's family, whom she knows you met abroad."

"Yes, we spent a week with her brother, the Hon. John McPherson, and his
wife Lady Jane, at the house of Captain Smithers in Middlesex. Miss
McPherson is, at least, well connected," Geraldine said, mollified at
once as she recalled her intimacy with Lady Jane McPherson.

To be acquainted with a titled lady was, in her opinion, something to be
proud of, and since her return from Europe she had wearied and disgusted
her friends with her frequent allusions to Lady Jane and her visit to
Penrhyn Park where she had met her. And Miss McPherson was her
sister-in-law, and on that account she must be tolerated and treated, at
least, with a show of friendship. So when she heard that she had arrived
she went to meet her with a good deal of gush and demonstration, which,
however, did not in the least mislead the lady with regard to her real
sentiments, for she and Geraldine had always been at odds, and from the
very nature of things there could be no real sympathy between the
fashionable lady of society, whose life was all a deception, and the