'Do you admire her?' said Mrs. Hazleby; 'well, I never could see
anything so remarkably handsome in Lizzie Woodbourne. Too thin, too
sharp, too high-coloured; Kate is twenty times prettier, to say
nothing of the little ones.'

'I should not call Miss Woodbourne pretty,' said Mrs. Bouverie, 'but
I think her brow and eye exceedingly beautiful and full of
expression.'

'Oh yes,' cried Mrs. Hazleby, 'she is thought vastly clever, I assure
you, though for my part I never could see anything in her but
pertness.'

'She has not the air of being pert,' said Mrs. Bouverie.

'Oh! she can give herself airs enough,' said Mrs. Hazleby; 'my poor
sister-in-law has had trouble enough with her; just like her mother,
they say.'

'So I was thinking,' said Mrs. Bouverie, looking at Elizabeth, who
was stooping down to a little shy girl, and trying to hear her
whispered request.

Mrs. Bouverie spoke in a tone so different from that which Mrs.
Hazleby expected, that even she found that she had gone too far, and
recollected that it was possible that Mrs. Bouverie might have known
the first Mrs. Woodbourne. She changed her note. 'Just like her poor
mother, and quite as delicate, poor girl.'