companionship of so flighty and flirty a girl as Miss Lucas was
injurious to her.

One day Lady Cicely Treherne was sitting with Mrs. Staines, smiling
languidly at her talk, and occasionally drawling out a little plain good
sense, when in came Miss Lucas, with her tongue well hung, as usual, and
dashed into twenty topics in ten minutes.

This young lady in her discourse was like those little oily beetles you
see in small ponds, whose whole life is spent in tacking--confound them
for it!--generally at right angles. What they are in navigation was Miss
Lucas in conversation: tacked so eternally from topic to topic, that no
man on earth, and not every woman, could follow her.

At the sight and sound of her, Lady Cicely congealed and stiffened.
Easy and unpretending with Mrs. Staines, she was all dignity, and even
majesty, in the presence of this chatterbox; and the smoothness with
which the transfiguration was accomplished marked that accomplished
actress the high-bred woman of the world.

Rosa, better able to estimate the change of manner than Miss Lucas was,
who did not know how little this Sawny was afflicted with misplaced
dignity, looked wistfully and distressed at her. Lady Cicely
smiled kindly in reply, rose, without seeming to hurry,--catch her
condescending to be rude to Charlotte Lucas,--and took her departure,
with a profound and most gracious courtesy to the lady who had driven
her away.

Mrs. Staines saw her down-stairs, and said, ruefully, "I am afraid
you do not like my friend Miss Lucas. She is a great rattle, but so